SAFA Skysailor Magazine

9 January | February 2022 SKY SAILOR Left: Getting ready in the pre-dawn darkness under the milky way Above: The endless snaking rivers and creeks cutting across the saltflats Photos: Mike Zupanc tion. It is truly an amazing spectacle, and the best way to experience it is from the air, either in a soaring craft with which you can do XC flights of hundreds of kilometres, or just in a powered aircraft with which you cruise around and marvel at the spectacle. And aircraft there will be. On a good morning there would be numerous aircraft out flying the cloud and they will all use airband VHF. You will be launching from, or nearby, Burketown airport, which is a security con- trolled RPT airport, so proper use of airband radio is extremely important. ‘Cowboys’ have flown there in the past, and have made them- selves extremely unpopular… It is awe inspiring, and in the dawn light, truly spectacular, but it does take some organ- isation to be able to fly it with a decent degree of safety. The weather is often quite hot and the place tends to be rather windy a lot of the time, and accommodation can be scarce. Accommodation options are the caravan park, Savannah Lodge or the pub, and late September and early October can be busy with school holidays, plus the barramundi season closes in early October in the Gulf so expect lots of fishermen taking up a lot of the camping spaces. North of Burketown, and all along the coast, are the saltflats – wide open expanses of claypan or mud, with rivers cutting across the area. Numerous riverside camping areas are available once all the town accommodation is full, but this is all aboriginal land and you