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3

ON THE BEACH

1970 – 1975

I took the news of the impending move hard. I was an odd child with an aircraft obsession, but I had three close friends, and we enjoyed playing in the vast spaces that were still in reach from the expanding new suburbs of Wagga Wagga. There was also the band. However, after understanding that my father’s new job was to be the secretary of the Mornington Racing Club, south of Melbourne on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, my ears pricked when I heard who the president of the club was. It was Sir Reginald Ansett, one of Australia’s most prominent airline pioneers and at the time, still head of one of Australia’s domestic airlines, Ansett Airlines of Australia.

Our family moved into a house in Amelia Avenue, north-east of Mornington’s centre. Unlike our previous house of fibro, wood and galvanised iron, it was of dark brown brick veneer with a tiled roof and a proper garage. It stood in a different world to that of southern, inland New South Wales: greyer skies, a milder climate, and Victorian people even had a discernibly different accent. It was more ‘urban’, but I liked the ti trees and softer vegetation compared with that of the great New South Wales plains. The smell of coal ‘briquettes’ hung in the air during winter, not unpleasant to me after happy memories of visits to grandparents in their Melbourne suburbs. There were several airfields in the area, and the then bustling general aviation field of Moorabbin was not far away. Port Philip Bay sparkled when it was sunny, and scallop boats rubbed against Mornington’s pier. Lush green fields and rows of huge she-oak trees lay to the north and east of our suburb.

My first day at the government Mornington High School was a shock. It was huge. Accommodating well over 1,000 students, it comprised rows of grey breeze-block classrooms with multiple white wooden window frames, vast areas of asphalt and several massive sports ovals. The sixth formers looked gigantic and awkward; near-adults in school uniform. There was a different teacher and room for each subject; after each period, hundreds of pairs of shoes pounded along the grey or brown linoleum of the corridors that smelled of stale sandwiches and floor polish. Locker doors slammed, and adding to the din was the traffic on the busy Nepean Highway outside. I knew nobody and found it hard to make friends, my angular skinniness and massive overbite not helping. The buildings were grey, the sky was often grey, the asphalt was grey and the uniforms were grey; but slowly, things got better.

Eventually I found others in the same situation. Tony, an immigrant from Britain, was one. I also began to realise what a mixing bowl a big government high school can be. Many children were bussed in from the hinterland and villages of the Mornington Peninsula, some with backgrounds significantly more humble than my own. One boy, Peter, had a scarred cheek and I do not think his home life was particularly pleasant. He was a tough customer but generally kept to himself, and no one would take him on in a rumble. He once surprised me when he surreptitiously showed me some artwork he had done, worried that the others would laugh at him. He left school early and I do not think that he ever got to make use of his talent. Whenever I was outside, especially at school, I always looked skywards at the Fokker Friendship and Douglas DC-9 airliners when they alternately droned and jetted across the sky, climbing out towards their cruise altitude from Melbourne Airport to destinations in Tasmania. What a life of flying and travel those pilots must be leading!

One day I reread On the Beach, which had never been far from my consciousness as an impressionable and sensitive child. Now we lived in the same area where much of the story was set. I became familiar with places from the novel: Frankston and its railway station, the beaches of Port Phillip Bay, and not far away was Berwick, where my parents occasionally visited friends. There were outings to Phillip Island. Much of the book had been set on the shores of the Bay, and family trips to Sorrento and Portsea gave glimpses of the roiling waters of the Rip, through which the fictional submarine USS Scorpion passed. It was to be scuttled with the crew outside the Heads, watched from the land by the heroine, Moira Davidson, pale and sick, before she took a suicide pill while sitting behind the wheel of her parked car with the last humans on the planet about to die after the northern hemisphere’s nuclear war.

My aviation enthusiasm continued unabated. I did jobs for neighbours in order to put a few cents aside for a model aircraft every few weeks: on those days, school would pass agonisingly until that last bell. Then I would pedal down to the shop on a corner in Main Street where row after row of model kits, most of them unaffordable, waited enticingly. I bought any aviation magazine I could afford and devoured books on flying. I could not see myself as becoming anything other than a pilot.

My parents had tracked down a local boys’ group for me, the Peninsula Air Cadets. Once again I found it awkward to start with but apart from the usual bully one may find in any youth group, it was generally well run by the adults. Unlike the Air League, its focus was on civilian aviation rather than the air force. Out-of-date Department of Aviation publications such as the Visual Flight Guide were given to us to study, and one avuncular instructor would read to us excerpts from the ‘Crash Comic’, the respected and long-gone Aviation Safety Digest. Thanks to this publication, even at the age of thirteen, I was beginning to understand the implications of flying aircraft in cloud or at night without suitable qualifications – it seemed that every second fatal accident in the Crash Comic was summed up as ‘… the pilot continued flight into weather conditions for which he was not qualified’, or words to that effect. There was also talk of actual ‘flying days’ for the Air Cadets, funds permitting. Despite this, I was still finding it difficult to adjust to my new life but on a visit to my paternal grandparents’ new house that lay in bare fields at Melton South on Melbourne’s western fringe, I was in for a day I would never forget. After years of reading about, modelling, spotting, sitting in, and talking about aircraft, I had never actually flown in one.

A Fuji FA-200 waited on the grass on a sparkling Easter day at Fogarty’s Field, near Melton. My paternal grandparents were with my parents and me at the airfield, and I think they had arranged the flight. I was allocated the front seat next to its pilot, an older white-haired gentleman, maybe one of the Flying Fogartys himself. Two other passengers sat behind, and I was off on my first ever flight. With its little engine roaring and the propeller buzzing, the Fuji accelerated along the grass. The rumble of the undercarriage diminished and this was it – airborne! The ground fell away and I gazed, fascinated – yet nervous – at the dwindling trees, fields, houses and fences as the Fuji, a Japanese low-wing four-seater, climbed.

The air was smooth, but the feeling of being airborne was one of fragility, yet wonder. The greenness of the paddocks, the tiny cars and the cattle! The lengthening afternoon shadows of the trees on the earth beneath! When the pilot made a few gentle turns, I marvelled at how the horizon ahead tilted but, thanks to his correct flying technique, we still felt normal in our seats, with no tendency to fall sideways. Looking down along the wing during the turns at trees, fields and the occasional house was intoxicating. Then the pilot came in to land, easing the Fuji onto the grass with its wheels rumbling once more and the aircraft bucking until it slowed and was taxied in. The propeller stopped and in the silence I climbed out, shaking with excitement, telling anyone who would listen for weeks afterwards, that I had ‘been up’.

The Peninsula Air Cadets were coming into their heyday, and funds became sufficient to organise occasional flights for the boys at Moorabbin and Moorooduc. Each flying day was looked forward to with great anticipation and the education provided by the Air Cadets and my own reading made these flights more than joy rides. Instruments started to make sense and the sensation of being suspended by an invisible gas, our atmosphere, never lost its wonder, but became more familiar and predictable with each flight.

I worked diligently at school and still read widely. In my mid-teens my mother began hounding me to get a job, which coincided with my teenager’s requirement for cash. A few hundred metres from our home, sitting in the middle of green fields with a treed perimeter, was a large but exclusive restaurant called John Thornton’s. Wide full-length windows were framed by arched brickwork. Plush red carpets set off snowy linen tablecloths and red cloth napkins in two separate dining areas. Prints of English hunting scenes adorned the walls.

One day in the early seventies, a sound from the sky reached my ears but it was nothing like the noise of any aircraft that I had ever heard. A tiny dot grew into an oval-shaped bubble that sprouted a slim tail boom, skids and a rotor. It was a Hughes 300 helicopter. Its tiny two-seat cabin with an engine revving furiously behind was attached to an open framework. It was on approach to the restaurant! I pedalled down to John Thornton’s to watch it land. It started to operate into the restaurant every few days, and during holidays and weekends, I was like that classic kid with their bike against the airport’s fence, but this was at a restaurant’s helipad!

The helicopter pilot also owned the restaurant. An imposing man with many business interests, Richard ‘Dick’ Thornton patiently answered my many questions about the machine. One wondrous day, he motioned me over to it after landing and with the rotor still turning, I clambered in. He whisked the machine up into a short circuit of the area to another landing. I started reading up on helicopters and how they flew. One day I plucked up the courage to ask him for a holiday job in the restaurant, and in a few months I had progressed from serviette folder, gardener and menial kitchen worker to drinks waiter and single-handedly waiting on diners during weekday lunches. I was now fifteen. Over the next few years the restaurant prospered and much of my non-school time was taken up with working at John Thornton’s. It was often hard and constant work, especially during holiday periods, but the overtime payments were put to good use: I could now afford the biggest model aircraft on sale at the Variety Centre on Main Street, and I could also start thinking about learning to fly!

Outside of the village of Moorooduc, then just a ‘co-op’ store and a few houses in lush fields to the east of Mornington, was its eponymous airfield, a north-south grass strip with towering she-oaks at one end. It was home to ‘The Pilotmakers’ flying school. Its owner and chief pilot was Jack Ellis, somewhat of an aviation identity in Victoria. He suffered fools lightly, and he was often at odds with ‘the Department’: the Department of Civil Aviation, now the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA). In determined anticipation, I obtained a Student Pilot’s Licence, purchased textbooks and started reading up on the theory required for the inevitable ground exams. The Pilotmakers ran an eclectic mix of aircraft including Cessnas, several old British Austers and other more obscure types. The Air Cadets had previously organised a few flights for us boys in one of the Austers, and the cheapest aircraft available for lessons was the smallest, oldest and tattiest Auster. It bore its registration of VH-BYJ.

BYJ’s fading paint scheme was completely yellow. It sat tail-down on two main wheels and a tail wheel, and pointing skywards was the squared-off ‘puppy nose’ of a Gipsy powered Auster. The Gipsy Major engine also powers the famous Tiger Moth biplane. It is an ‘inverted four’: four in-line cylinders drive a crankshaft in the conventional manner, but the engine is mounted upside down compared to that in a ‘straight four’ car. Having the crankshaft at the top enables more clearance for the propeller from the ground, improves visibility over the nose for the pilot, and allows efficient lubrication of the cylinders’ valve gear, which is permanently bathed in oil contained in the rocker covers under each cylinder. The engine is air-cooled through an asymmetric opening in the cowling, just below the propeller, and a separate oil tank is drained and fed by engine-driven pumps. The Gipsy Major is still a popular and generally reliable engine today.

BYJ’s Gipsy turned a wooden two-bladed propeller which dragged its airframe, made from tubular metal covered with fabric tightened by liberal applications of a pungent chemical called ‘dope’, noisily and slowly through the air. BYJ’s two occupants sat in a tubular steel cage and looked ahead through an inverted ‘W’ of tubular struts and a thin Perspex windscreen over the streamlined upper cowling that covered the engine. This cowling was the only streamlined feature of the Auster. The wings sat high with their ‘roots’ (the ends that join the fuselage, or body), just above each occupant’s head, and they efficiently blocked any view to the side or above. Square windows on each side enabled a tantalising view of the earth below through a ‘V’ of struts, which braced the mid-wing structure to the fuselage and landing gear mountings. Ironically, BYJ had been built for the Royal Australian Air Force in wartime 1943 as an Auster Mark III, its role observation and army cooperation, with large areas of its cabin clad in clear Perspex. This was done away with, as was then the fashion, when the aircraft was civilianised post-war. Blue-painted plywood panels now lined the interior around the occupants, which grudgingly yielded an additional rounded car-type window behind each seat, and instead of a glorious view behind and upwards through the tubular metal framework, there was only the ghastly reddish-grey of the inside of the fabric covering.

The machine was controlled in pitch (up and down) and roll (banking and turning) by two joysticks, which curved up from under the instrument panel. Two rudder pedals and the Auster’s notorious heel-operated brakes were on the floor in front of each occupant, and one throttle lever, that controlled the engine’s speed, protruded from the middle of the panel. A larger lever protruded from the cockpit roof. Hauling down on it and releasing its unlocking mechanism at various positions set the flaps, surfaces on the underside ‘trailing edge’ of the wings which provided extra lift, or on further extension, ‘drag’ to assist landing. Instrumentation was the minimum required: an air speed indicator, which showed the speed that the machine was travelling through the air in ‘knots’, or nautical miles per hour; an altimeter that showed height above sea level in thousands and hundreds of feet; a primitive compass, a ‘turn indicator’ that showed whether the pilot was turning and, if so, whether they were using the rudder pedals to correctly ‘balance’ the turn; and for the engine, an oil pressure gauge and a revolutions indicator. Two brass switches similar to those in an antique light switch controlled their respective, redundant magneto systems and associated spark plugs that supplied ignition to the engine, and a fuel shutoff cock completed the equipment required to fly an Auster. VH-BYJ had no starting system; the propeller was ‘hand swung’ in the manner of decades before. Today, Austers are generally regarded with nostalgia and affection particularly by those who own them, but my main attraction to BYJ in 1974 was that it was eighteen dollars per hour to hire, instructor included. So, at the age of sixteen, my flying lessons began.

However, work at John Thornton’s started to peter out. I cannot recollect if it was due to the business environment or if it was sold on by Dick, but coincidentally, I had spent some of my earnings on a better second-hand drum kit, and some school friends and I had formed a garage band. Paul, the bass player, was older for his years, and eventually a new band formed that included acquaintances of Paul’s who were grown men in their twenties. We practised and eventually got work. I played the drums by ear – I still do – and our brand of fifties and sixties rock ‘n’ roll must have been in demand because we had no problem getting regular Saturday night engagements in hotels around the Peninsula and in particular, the Sorrento Hotel. Occasional restaurant work and regular Saturday nights of unsophisticated drumming to progressively inebriated pub patrons while the nights wore on allowed a flying lesson with The Pilotmakers about once every two weeks.

My instructor was Simon. Patiently, he led me through the steps of controlling an aeroplane: ‘straight and level’ flight, then turns, descents, climbs, and steeply banked turns. I dutifully learned the few checklist items related to starting and flying an Auster. The sensitivity of an aircraft’s flight controls can be off-putting to many new pilots and I was no exception, particularly as a sixteen-year-old boy. Simon taught me the basics of flying ‘attitude’; that is, using the control column to select a picture of the aircraft’s nose with regard to the horizon. Side to side movement of the column banked the aircraft to the right or left. This, along with the application of the appropriate rudder pedal to balance the turn, resulted in a smooth and comfortable change of direction. Back and forward movement raised and lowered the Auster’s nose with respect to the horizon to climb and descend. ‘Attitude’ flying, rather than just chasing the indications on the instruments, was the correct technique. ‘Steep turns’, which were turns with the Auster’s wings at forty-five degrees to the horizon, became easier after I grasped this very basic principle of aircraft control.

Every two weeks, I would be driven out to Moorooduc along Tyabb Road, or occasionally pedal my bicycle, for a precious hour in the Auster. Some ground would have to be re-covered over each session, because fortnightly is not an ideal frequency for flying lessons, but it was all I could afford – often southern Victoria’s fickle weather would preclude flying for longer periods.

Occasionally Simon would be away or occupied with another student, and Jack Ellis, the school’s owner, took Simon’s place. I had graduated to take-offs and landings, and with the patience of Job, the instructors showed me the principles and practice of an approach and landing.

The two basic ingredients of a successful approach and landing are ‘glide path’ and ‘airspeed’. The glide path is the angle of descent and this was set by using the Auster’s throttle in my right hand to adjust the engine speed and therefore the rate at which BYJ would descend. Adjusting the aircraft’s pitch attitude with my left hand on the stick correctly set the speed, and the aim was to keep the threshold, the start of the runway, in a constant position in the windscreen and at a constant angle. Movement of one control would always result in a correction required by the other. In the meantime, the aircraft had to be kept on the centreline of the approach path using side-to-side movements of the column to turn. There were towering she-oak trees just before the clear space of Moorooduc airfield’s grass runway and to safely clear these, yet not be too high for a safe landing, was desirable. With the trees passed, the threshold’s position would be kept constant in the windscreen, and then it was time for the ‘round out’, nowadays generally referred to as the ‘flare’. This was the tricky part.

Flare too high, and the little yellow Auster would float along about a metre off the grass, lose speed, then settle down with an uncomfortable lurch and thump. Worse, flare late, and whump! The main wheels would thud onto the ground and the aircraft would bounce, its ‘tail wheel’ configuration ensuring that it would kangaroo hop down the runway, its young pilot trying desperately to smooth the situation out but out of synchronisation with the aircraft’s movements. Extreme cases would result in the far safer option of a ‘go around’ where power was applied, the nose raised to the climb attitude, and the aircraft climbed away for another attempt. The correct point for the flare could only be judged by experience, and first of all by watching Simon’s landings and then, with him sitting patiently through my attempts, reasonable flare points resulted. Then, it was important to keep raising the aircraft’s attitude as the speed bled off, engine ticking over at idle, to play the rate of raising the nose with respect to the horizon against the rate at which the speed reduced, in order for the Auster to settle onto its main wheels which rumbled and rattled on the grass: an acceptable ‘arrival’.

However, being a ‘tail wheel’ aircraft, it was vital to keep the Auster straight once its main wheels were on the ground. ‘Tail draggers’ have their centre of gravity behind the main wheels, and any inattention to tracking straight down the runway will lead to physics taking over and the tail swinging, with extreme cases resulting in the machine running off the runway. With the aircraft on the ground, moving in two dimensions, directional control was done with the rudder pedals, but even then, one still had to ‘fly’ the Auster. After landing, its tail would eventually settle gently onto its little wheel at the back making directional control a little easier, but in windy conditions, even taxiing BYJ could be challenging.

An airfield’s traffic ‘circuit’ or ‘pattern’ has four stages: firstly ‘upwind’, where the aircraft is climbed out into the wind after take-off; then a ‘crosswind’ leg to left or right depending on local regulations (usually to the left), still climbing. Then a level turn is made ‘onto downwind’, parallel to the runway, the strip appearing through the vee of the struts beyond the pilot’s shoulder where a memorised ‘downwind checklist’ is spoken to oneself. On the ‘base’ leg at ninety degrees to the runway, power is reduced and a stage of flap selected (in the Auster, by hauling down on that flap lever); this starts a gentle descent. Looking for a feature on the extended centreline of the runway, the pilot judges the final turn onto the final ‘approach’ leg, looking for that correct picture of glide path angle and aiming point. With a final stage of flap, speed dribbling back to the correct ‘threshold’ or ‘over the fence’ speed, and a successful judgment of the flare point, the Auster would settle onto the grass, sometimes for a ‘full stop’ landing but increasingly, during training, the tail would be held up, power applied and the aircraft would be lifted off again for another circuit. This was called a ‘touch and go’ landing.

Circuit training was interspersed with sessions of stalling the aircraft. It is vital that a pilot can recognise signs of, and can recover from, an aircraft stall. A stall occurs when too much is being asked of the aircraft’s wing; usually due to pilot mishandling or lack of awareness, extreme manoeuvring or bad weather.

Drifting high at 4,000 feet over a patchwork of countryside, under Simon’s supervision I practised stalls and recoveries from them. With waves of vibration from the idling engine rippling through the structure, the propeller blades almost visible, the yellow nose was lifted higher into blue sky to maintain altitude. The controls became sloppy as the speed of the wind over them reduced. I kept the wings level with the horizon, then at that moment when the wings’ clutching hands on ‘lift’ let go there was a little buffet, a ‘break’ and a pitch down, stomach slightly noticeable as the natural stability of the aircraft took over. With gentle forward ‘stick’ to positively reduce the wing’s angle of attack then on with the power the Auster would be flying again, although in a slight dive. Unnerving at first, practicing stalls was vital so that I would be able to recognise the onset of one: the high nose attitude (in most cases), the low and decreasing airspeed, controls sloppy, buffet and then the stall itself. At height the stall is a benign manoeuvre and is routinely practised, but near to the ground, especially in a turn, it can be a killer.

Engine failure in a single engine aircraft is a serious matter, and it was vital to cope with loss of power at any stage during flight. With the Gipsy engine at idle BYJ became a virtual glider, and provided that the correct attitude and speed were flown, a gentle descent would result, enabling its pilot to select and head for a landing area, preferably into wind, at forty-five knots, eighty-three kilometres per hour. Most reasonable farmers’ fields were usable. These practice forced landings would end in a ‘go around’, not an actual touchdown unless being practised on the runway. The critical case was failure at, or soon after take-off, where the pilot would either ‘abort’ the take-off run with the aircraft still on or near to the ground, or smartly lower the nose, maintain the safe gliding speed, select a clear area, turn off the ignition, shut off the fuel and do what else was necessary to ensure survival. Above all, avoid the stall!

On one hot day over brown paddocks, even the Peninsula was dusty under hazy summer skies. Once again, Jack had replaced Simon as my instructor for the day’s flight. He gave me a thorough workout in the heat: circuits, simulated engine failures and stalls. There was a passable final landing and the usual weaving and straining to see past the Auster’s upthrust nose to clear the way ahead back to its parking spot, but then Jack shouted over the ch-chug ch-hug ch-chug of the Gipsy’s idle, ‘Right, don’t shut down, I’m getting out. Taxi out, do one circuit and come back in.’ I was going solo!

As with most pilots, my first solo was unforgettable. Alone! No instructor to intervene or provide advice. I taxied the yellow Auster, carefully ran up the engine and worked through the simple memorised ‘take-off checks’. Now, on to Moorooduc’s grass runway, open the throttle, and the aircraft eagerly became airborne without fifty per cent of its human load on board; it seemed a different aircraft without the weight of Simon or Jack. This time the other seat was vacant, its harness secured to avoid fouling the dual controls. A carefully flown circuit and a little ‘float’ just before touchdown, then the taxi in, shut down and final checks. A handshake from Jack, and there it was. I had lifted a machine into the sky unassisted and returned it and myself in it undamaged to earth at sixteen years of age.

Two more years of school remained. As fanatical about aerospace as ever, I devoured any book I could obtain on the subject, but I also read other topics. However, with the throes of adolescence, schoolwork had slipped somewhat and there were often heated clashes with my parents, particularly my mother. I had little in common with my sisters and the rest of my family were sport-mad where I was not, so I spent many hours in my room making models, reading, and dreaming of the day I would be out of that house and flying. I read up on schemes to join the air force, civilian training options and all aspects of aviation including helicopters and gliders.

A few of the mixed bag of Mornington High’s students with whom I hung out were rather wild, and the combination of frustration with home life and the inevitable peer group expectations led to typical adolescent behaviour, cockiness and some arrogance after my solo but awkwardness in many other situations. Not good looking, I was skinny and angular. Acne raged. My overbite had been partly reset by some orthodontic work, but my mouth was, and still is, not pretty! However I still read widely and even though it was a government school, Mornington High had many teachers of a high calibre.

A few teachers were not so respected. A music teacher proudly wore a badge that displayed a Viet Cong flag on her clothing – only recently had Australian troops been withdrawn from Vietnam, after many of our servicemen died there. One teacher had a penchant for gripping boys by the tie, pulling up on it and cuffing their heads. He was known as ‘Boston’, after the Boston Strangler. ‘Fags’ was a heavy smoker. ‘The Fuhrer’ was a moustachioed disciplinarian, and there was the recently immigrated Business Studies teacher: he was absolutely humourless, and his English was almost indecipherable. He was frequently seen using the corridor telephone outside the staff room to call his stockbroker, so he was known as ‘Dinger’, which was also then a word for condom. ‘Grondy’, one of the sports teachers departed the school suddenly after parents became aware of his predilection for lining the boys up after a supposedly poor performance, getting them to bend over, then tapping their backsides with a cricket bat.

We had nicknames for most of teachers and each other. One boy was albino in appearance, small of frame, very thin and already had a receding hairline. He was affectionately known as ‘Healthy’. A huge sixth-form boy was ‘Lurch’, after the Addams Family butler. To fit in I tried to grow my hair long like the other boys, but it merely stuck out in thick wads like antlers on either side of my narrow head, so to my classmates I was ‘Bullwinkle’, after the cartoon moose.

However, I realised that good results would be a ticket out, and I was going to have a career in aviation come what may. I was selected for Mornington High’s team for a television school quiz show called ‘It’s Academic’. Our team won our first round against two other government schools. In the next round, one question asked was, ‘What was the name of the U.S. nuclear submarine that sank in 1963?’ I knew it! I pressed the buzzer and immediately blurted out, ‘USS Thresher’, but my impetuosity led to no points for the answer – I had not waited for Mr Webb, the quizmaster, to call my school’s name and direct me to answer. We were a state school up against two highly coached teams from private schools on this round and predictably, we lost, but we were proud to have made it to the semi-finals. However, impetuosity and thoughtlessness would cause problems for me in the future.

As the restaurant work petered out, the band became more important. The lead guitarist had to pick me up from my home for practices and ‘gigs’; I could not legally drive and even if I could, I was not able to afford to run, let alone buy, any car. Also, in those times, the state of Victoria stipulated a higher minimum driving age. On Saturdays, at least during summer, there would be our regular engagement in the Sorrento Hotel, but other work became patchy, and the reduction of earnings, weather and other factors conspired to reduce the amount of flying at Moorooduc. For the next few years until I finished school, my flying was a desultory mixture of dual lessons, much of it recovering past ground, and the very occasional solo flight, circuits and ‘steep turns’ in the training area and not much else.

My father arranged work for me at Mornington Racecourse: menial jobs such as picking up empty glasses around the bar areas, working on the track, cleaning and watering. I worked with a gang of labourers and was shown no special treatment as the boss’s son. The workers were down to earth fellows, not well-educated, but they accepted me as one of them and I enjoyed their company. I made it known that I was going to become a pilot, and even only with the stated intention, they often asked questions about aircraft and air travel, and in return, during our mind-numbing routine of ‘treading in’ the track (replacing the divots kicked out by the horses’ hooves), they spun yarns and told awful jokes. I was taught to drive the tractors, and I was occasionally allowed to drive my mother’s old Morris car on the course.

Ansett Airlines was one of two domestic airlines under the highly regulated ‘Two Airline Policy’ of Australia in the late 1970s. Its chief was still its founding father, Sir Reginald Ansett, one of Australia’s most accomplished and respected airline pioneers. My father’s secretarial job at Mornington Racecourse was onerous for him in one respect: the hard-working Sir Reginald devoted little time to pleasure but a rare pastime, as president of the Racing Club, was spending Sunday afternoons at the racecourse. On most Sundays, ‘Sir Reg’ appeared at the track in his big blue Cadillac. In would get my father and the head groundsman, and round and round the track they would drive, talking horses, race meetings and grass. I was introduced to Sir Reginald only once, shortly after we first arrived in Mornington; young and in awe of a knight and my father’s boss, I couldn’t bring myself to blurt out that I wanted to be a pilot. Therefore, guidance for an aviation career did not come from Sir Reginald Ansett; but he did have his own helicopter pilot.

Sir Reg famously commuted by helicopter most days from his bay side home to Melbourne’s heliport on the Yarra River, then to be chauffeured to the Ansett Airlines city office. His Bell JetRanger was also famous – its fuselage, as much as a helicopter’s can be, was streamlined, and adorned with the same Ansett livery of the day as its airliners: red, black and white, with a stylised red ‘A’ in a white circle. My father knew Cal, his helicopter pilot slightly. Cal had also flown fixed wing aircraft with Ansett Airlines. One evening it was arranged for him to visit our home. He had previously been a pilot in the Royal Australian Navy and had flown fixed wing aircraft and helicopters from its aircraft carrier, HMAS Melbourne. Cal talked of naval flying, and he awoke in me an appreciation that Fleet Air Arm aviators have something that no other pilots can boast: the ability to take off from, and land on, a ship at sea. He recounted naval life, the flying, the travel, the camaraderie in the tightly-knit Fleet Air Arm, which was a service far smaller than Australia’s air force. Its only land base was just outside the town of Nowra, which sat in lush country south of Sydney near the New South Wales coast. I had always liked ships – one of my prized models was a large sailing vessel. I had noted with interest newspaper advertisements for civilian merchant naval cadets, and although flying was my first love, naval aviation might just be a way to enjoy both. With the Cold War in full force, Australia’s navy operated Skyhawk attack jets, Grumman Tracker patrol aircraft and various helicopters, and the more I read and heard, the more my excitement mounted about becoming a pilot in the navy. Unlike the air force, you did not need a Sixth Form education to join! Fifth Form was acceptable.

I studied the material that the navy’s recruiting office posted out after my enquiries and at the age of seventeen, I excitedly travelled on the electric train from Frankston to Melbourne city to begin the selection process. Frankston Station had achieved mild fame in scenes from the film version of Neville Shute’s On the Beach. Along with Melbourne’s remote southerly location from the northern hemisphere’s nuclear war, Shute had chosen the city for his setting because of the massive reserves of coal that lay to its east in Gippsland. With the supply of oil non-existent with the approaching end of civilisation, Victoria’s coal continued to produce electricity for homes, industry and transport. This allowed Melbourne’s inhabitants to stoically live a ‘normal’ life to the end.

There were preliminary interviews and medical examinations: IQ tests, time/speed/distance problems, chasing a blob of light around a screen with a joystick, long cold waits in cubicles clad in a paper dressing gown for the medical tests … it all seemed to go well. I had bought paperback books of IQ tests, studied the Royal Australian Navy’s order of battle in ships and aircraft, and Lieutenant Commander Henry, the middle-aged naval officer who ran the recruiting office, was kind and helpful. My feeling about how I had done was correct, and some weeks later I was invited for more tests, with an interview by a Selection Board to follow.

I was elated. I was going to leave school early to become a navy pilot! Flying Skyhawk jets, wearing a crisp white uniform, travel and life at sea on an aircraft carrier – what a life for a teenager! I worked through more books of IQ tests, flew at Moorooduc when I could afford it, played in the band, worked at the racecourse and carried on with the initial term of Sixth Form. Finally, the great day dawned, and there I was again at the navy recruiting office in Flinders Lane for more tests in greater depth this time, and then to face the Selection Board.

I was directed into a room furnished with the classic green baize table, introduced to its occupants and told to sit. Facing me were men in civilian clothes – no brass buttons or gold insignia here. They were all naval officers except for a psychologist, and the questions commenced. Lieutenant Commander Errol Kavanagh, urbane and polite (wow! A Skyhawk pilot!), asked most of the questions. I answered the technical questions well, but I was awkward with those about my personal life, holidays, girlfriend (actually, the lack of one) and relationships. Well, what would they expect from a seventeen-year-old? Also, they alluded to staying at school and passing my Higher School Certificate. Still, I thought that it hadn’t gone too badly, and on the train home I wondered when I would hear the result. I looked forward to leaving home for an exciting life of flying with the navy.

Schoolwork was getting difficult. I never possessed a particular mathematical bent and I replaced two advanced mathematics subjects with French, which I had always enjoyed, and ‘general’ maths. I was coping but not particularly distinguishing myself, distracted by my social life and the notion that I was going to become a navy pilot and I wouldn’t need to pass the HSC (Higher School Certificate). The weeks dragged agonisingly while I waited to hear from the navy; being away for a school camp near Castlemaine during the green Victorian winter was excruciating. I called home every day from the nearest pay phone asking my parents – ‘No, we haven’t heard anything.’

On my return from the camp, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I telephoned Lieutenant Commander Henry, who said: ‘I’ve got bad news, I’m afraid, Mark. Your application has been unsuccessful – I was about to ring you. The board indicated that you are a little immature, so I would suggest that you stay at school, get your HSC, and you can try again next year. I’m sorry.’

I was devastated.

On reflection, this was indicative of the navy always having been a ‘people’ service. A ship runs twenty-four hours a day: its captain, officers and petty officers (who are equivalent to sergeants in the army and air force), apart from their required technical abilities, need to know how to handle people well in a floating community. A naval vessel is cramped, noisy, pitching and rolling, its crew far from family and potentially at war. The Board’s response was typical of the calibre of many in the navy, not just a flat ‘you have missed out’, but one that was also accompanied with advice and encouragement for the future.

Time is a healer – particularly to an adolescent – and the navy dream faded a little. There was always the air force or civilian flying, and I was interested in the workings of the human body, with an ulterior motive of becoming a ‘rich doctor’ in order to own my own aircraft. With the Higher School Certificate looming at the end of the year, schoolwork was intensifying, and there were conflicts with my mother about late nights out with the band, so that income was petering out, and the Moorooduc flying became even less regular. It did not help when old BYJ was grounded for refurbishment and the other aircraft were too expensive to hire. Not particularly happy at home, I wanted out, and as the academic year drew towards its climax, I decided that I had better knuckle down and apart from occasional work at the racecourse, I needed to concentrate on my schoolwork.

I have always believed in preparation, removing as much of an unknown as possible before a test, and, as with the IQ test books I worked through for the navy, I started working through past paper after past paper of the Victorian HSC examinations. The real thing would, therefore, not be an unknown. Most of Mornington High’s Sixth Form teachers were helpful to those who put the work in, so this, the past papers and, at last, some increasing maturity, provided a basis for tackling the HSC.

It can be funny how things work out sometimes. My parents had decided to heavily renovate our house by adding an upstairs room, during the time of my exam preparation. The place was a shambles; hammering and sawing reverberated through it, so the only alternative for daytime study was in the cubicles of the newly-constructed library building at school. In the library, free of the distractions of home (with or without renovations), I was motivated to work hard. In the meantime, university courses were on ‘offer’, so, with little thought about how I or my parents would pay for them, I submitted preferences to the various universities for Medicine and Meteorology. However, although I was now hard at work with an eye on the future, I was still thoughtless and impetuous at times. One day the librarian overheard me outside the library ‘sounding off’ to friends about her, calling her names, regarding some rule she had introduced. She promptly banned me from the library.

After I spent the following day at home with the renovations then the next lying in the sand at Mills Beach trying to study, the penny dropped: I had been dreadfully rude, and under stress. The next morning, I apologised to her. She told me, ‘Thank you, it took a man to do that.’ Lesson learned. Welcomed back to the peace of the library, once again I was able to work at past paper after past paper.

I remember well the examination days of late ’75. A girl was sobbing after she opened the first paper while I began mine, plodding through the questions. Most seemed straightforward after all the preparation, and I made sure to read the questions carefully and to doublecheck the answers. The final exam, English, ended with a ‘free essay’ requirement. Figuring that not many HSC candidates would be in a position to write a description of their first solo aeroplane flight, I did just that using appropriate amounts of flowery adolescent prose. After handing in the paper, my school days were over.

After that came the long hiatus of the Australian summer. Even on the temperate Mornington Peninsula there were days of relentless blue skies, the turquoise sea, brown fields under waves of heat, with the she oaks and ti trees being the only green in sight. It was an agonising wait for the HSC results: they would determine the offers of placement at the universities.

I now laboured full-time at the racecourse. I could not afford to undergo a structured course toward a Private Pilot’s Licence and beyond to Commercial level, so there was little else to do but wait for my results and socialise. One muggy, windless afternoon under grey sky I was shifting hoses at the racecourse when my father’s car appeared on the road outside. It stopped, and Dad poked an envelope through the fence. I tore it open to reveal my HSC results, and I had done well. My avid reading through the years had even contributed to a Distinction in English.

Coincidentally, a thunderstorm broke. I stopped work and was driven home. With the storm’s passing, the telephone rang with excited calls from friends. My friend Tony would soon pick me up and we would drive to another mate’s house towards the other side of the Mornington Peninsula to see how he had fared; Rod lived in humble circumstances and did not have a telephone. Tony and his girlfriend arrived in their old grey Toyota.

I remember a screech of tyres and me calling ‘Hang on!’ After that, stillness and blackness. I could not see or move, but I could hear. I was aware of a girl moaning and reassuring words from strangers. No visual picture remains in my conscious memory, but I can still recall the sounds. Later came a slow drive in another vehicle (am I in an ambulance?), with continued groans from the girl. The black became grey, and I did not feel much pain. Eventually, I realised that I was in a bed somewhere and I could hear my parents’ voices. Still unable able to see, I asked, ‘What happened?’

‘You’ve been in a car accident,’ my mother replied.

Later I could see again, and I was aware of nurses and a hospital room. I could put my tongue into a hole under my lower lip. Now my shoulder hurt, and one of my arms was in a sling. I was still in the clothes I was wearing at the racecourse, and, because of a medical reason, my body had not been washed.

Distracted by his girlfriend, Tony had been late braking at an intersection and the old car skidded on the asphalt, still slick from the thunderstorm. We hit a vehicle that was travelling along the intersecting road. A family group at a nearby sports oval had rushed over to the scene; theirs had been the comforting voices. Tony was unhurt but his girlfriend’s body had not been treated well by the seatbelt she was wearing and the deceleration severely injured her back, hence the slow ambulance trip to minimise her distress. I had been in the little car’s back seat, but wore no seat belt, because they were not fitted to the rear seats of many vehicles then. I never saw the wreck of the car, but Rod later described the ‘V’ that my body had made in the front bench seat of the old grey Toyota, which at least had absorbed my momentum and prevented me from being hurled through the windscreen. The occupants of the other vehicle were uninjured, although my mother later said that the other vehicle’s driver had been found over the legal blood alcohol limit.

All that work … good exam results … then a thunderstorm to clear the air … but after that, a car crash and injuries … could I become a pilot now?