SAFA Skysailor Magazine

18 SKY SAILOR July | August 2022 When people would ask me after a trip, I found myself repeatedly saying: “The mountains will make you fall in love with flying cross-country, but the flatlands will show you what you are made of.” This last season I was fortunate enough to go on two separate tow safaris with Fly Dubbo. The first was in mid-January with a team of hard-core XC pilots (my words, not theirs). Of the five pilots, I was the only woman, the most junior and on the lowest wing. But the boys welcomed me to the group and my enthusiasm matched theirs. Early on in the trip we established that we weren’t there for a holiday, but to chase the weather and fly hard. With La Niña’s full force turning much of NSW into a veritable floodplain, we headed west where the red dirt is kicked up by wild goats and roads are rarely paved. Prior to this trip I’d towed a few times out of Conargo with Fly XC, but this was different. For a week, we lived and breathed towing. We slept under the stars in swags, often at truck stops or in quiet little towns. All meals were expertly prepared, but between bites it was all talk of gear, weather and routes. Each day the aim was to position ourselves in a favourable spot to fly far. Sometimes this meant rolling out of bed at sunrise, a quick feed, packing up camp and driving for a couple of hours to some remote place where the wind lined up with the road direction. Some days we had to adapt to weather updates, live wind readings, but always we were eager. On the second day of the trip, we set the trend by waking up at Eskdale to the hum of truck generators in the dry heat. The sun wasn’t up yet, but it promised to be a hot one. Towing is not for the faint-hearted by Tina Thorburn