Monday, October 7, 2013

We like University City Brisbane

Wednesday Afternoon 2.Oct

We arrived in Brisbane, went quite quickly through Customs and Immigration and refuelled. Pilots say: you refuel when it is available, not when you feel like it. Well I can say the same with eating and relaxing and sleeping on this trip: you do this when there is an opportunity. Anyhow, we booked into a very nice and central downtown accommodation and our first walk took us to Ben's Camera Shop and we have now replaced our defect camera.



Off we go sightseeing and we walked thru town and a market, passed a 'Bratwurstbude' with a pitchblack body serving customers and next door the 'Backstube' mit einem Dirndl bekleideter jungen Dame.

We went down ' Brisbane River' on a City Hopper Cruiser, looked at the buildings, People and had a very relaxing afternoon. After a Thai Meal we fell into bed, exhausted. We enjoyed Brisbane.

Thursday, 02.10.2013, 09h10 local time

At the airport, we asked for start up which was approved, a few minutes later we asked for clearance and taxi instruction, ground control kept asking us to stand by...stand by...after 10 minutes we were just about to ask him again when another pilot asked for Taxi instructions. Well, he was told by ground control: "I asked you to stand by, you are not the only one on this airport. STAND BY", after that we kept quiet for the moment. Than we were given our clearance and taxi instructions. Off we went taxiing for at least 10 minutes. We were about No 5 to depart. Another pilot 'dared' to say: Sir, your instructions were not clear, at one point or another. Ground control in that case answered: 'Sir, would you like to come and join me up here?' As if to say: do the job yourself.  We could not believe what was said to each other! By the time we departed 50 minutes were gone. Never ever anywhere in the world did it take as that long to depart.

We had a beautiful flight, nearly 05h00 hours to Cairns. Below us islands, fantastic coast lines, beaches and nature pur for neverending miles. We start liking Australia....


The aircraft performs nicely, we have an Outside Temperature of minus 10 degrees, even the fuel gauge starts working again.



We arrived in Cairns, and parked in front of a AMO. We would like them to do an oil change, oil filtre change and have the aircraft washed. Two weeks prior we had booked an appointment for this week with that particular maintenance company. After us listening to long excuses, why and when and how....Dietmar decided, no worries mate, lets leave it ... we will just carry on flying in 5 days. He bought 3 litres of oil, again from a Helicopter Company, we parked and refuelled the aircraft and left for our Hotel. 

Once we got settled and had unpacked we walked a few hundred metres and found a very casual dining place on a busy intersection. We chose to sit on a hight bistro table to be able to watch people walking past. We took a picture of the menu, mainly to remind us of the cost of a casual meal:


In front of us high trees and the next moment huge flocks of Parakeet birds settled in those trees with lots of noise and sounds. It was most amazing and once sunset was over it got quite by the minute until they all settled down. So did we. We finished our meal and wine and walked back to our hotel  choosing to walk along the beach parade. On the way we watched a Fire artist and very nice light features along the walkway.

Pics to follow










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