It all started in 1971…

In the 1971 my grandmother began to use the proceeds from her hair dressing business to pay for flying lessons. Every week she would drive the 60 kilometres from the little farm they owned in Wirrega, rural South Australia, to the little airfield in a town called Nhill. 

My grandfather had been flying for years and owned a Cessna… but he wanted an American Plane! Specifically he wanted a Beechcraft Bonanza. Unavailable in Australia at the time, his decided that the only option was to purchase the desired aircraft was to take a commercial flight to the USA, buy it there and fly it back home. And so, in 1973 they did just that. With a very tight baggage allowance, Grandma was restricted to one small suitcase and a pair of yellow flares. But she still managed to look fabulous!

Their journey home took then across the arctic circle, watching icebergs floating in the cold waters and ice breaking from frozen cliffs. They followed an oil pipe line across Saudi Arabia - with strict instructions to stick to a very narrow flight path through Israel to avoid being shot down over the Golan Heights. They caughed up dust in Pakistan and had to navigating the Monsoons in South East Asia, before finally landing the aircraft in a tiny airfield in the middle of rural South Australia - back to their farm, their sheep and hair dressing salon 56 days later.