It was 1997 and as part of our 26th wedding anniversary, we had signed up for an adventure holiday based in Cairns. The tour company, Raging Thunder, picked us from our resort village in Cairns at 4.15 am (yes a.m.) for a long drive in the dark early hours of the morning to Mareeba in the Atherton Tableland, where the hot air balloons were being set up and the burners were firing up. When the balloons were filled, we climbed into the waist high balloon basket, and with the burners roaring away, we were lifted up into the sky. When we reached our cruising height, Andrew Lee (the pilot) cut off the burners and all was silent. It was totally silent as we drifted above the breathtaking Atherton Tableland, with Andrew pointing out the occasional animals and the landmarks. I did wonder how he steered the balloon but was too engrossed to ask. It seemed as if we were just drifting, with two support vehicle tracking and trailing us on the ground. I was engrossed by the landscape, but was also often drawn to the shadow and silhouette of the balloon as the gorgeous sun rose over the horizon. We skimmed the treetops and bumped the ground once or twice before we landed, Andrew having instructed us to hold on to the rope surrounding the inside of the basket. Upon landing, the support crew were there, but insufficient in numbers to deflate the huge balloon and all passengers participated in helping to deflate and pack the balloon, which Kit thought was great fun as it reminded her of her childhood days, playing with inflated platforms. We were then driven to the Ranging Thunder Café where we had a traditional welcome champagne breakfast.
It was December in 1979, eighteen years earlier, and we took T, who was 6 year old then, with us. After visiting Sydney and Melbourne, we flew to Christchurch and rented a car to drive the South Island of New Zealand. On that drive, we drove up to the Hermitage at Mt Cook. There was a sightseeing plane sitting out on the tarmac, and we enquired about it, and were told that we could go and view the glaciers and mountains when the pilot deemed it safe to go. We booked ourselves on the flight and waited for a short while. It was a small propeller plane with a seating capacity of about six. A rather oversized lady was at the Hermitage and she was also going on the flight. As we boarded the plane, the large fat lady wanted to sit next to the pilot, and to balance the plane out, my son, T, was made to sit behind the lady, with Kit and myself occupying the last row. We took off and had a marvellous brilliant flight over the Southern Alps and the glaciers and valleys. T had a great view of the lady’s back, but he enjoyed the flight, which was an adventure for him. The plane did not have much instrumentations or gauges, and I asked the pilot how he was able to swerve left and right and to dodge the mountain peaks. He told us that he did it visually and would pull to climb when he saw two mountain peak landmarks coinciding and hopefully the landmarks had not shifted. I dared not ask him what happens if a sudden wisp of cloud were to cover the landmarks. I later learned that these pilots pay the highest premiums for their life insurance. Anyway, it was an invigorating and breathtaking flight and we thoroughly enjoyed it, even T, who was sitting behind the fat lady. On that same trip, Kit and T were taken to the cockpit of Qantas’ new Boeing 747 which flew them from Sydney to Melbourne and had a great view on that flight.Our most memorable and also most recent sight-seeing flight was the one we did in 2007 on the 5th of July when we docked at Juneau in Alaska.After disembarking from the Dawn Princess, we visited the Mendenhall Glacier and the Mount Roberts Tramway when the sky was a little overcast and it drizzled at Mendenhall. After our descent from the Tramway in the afternoon, the sky cleared. We quickly signed ourselves up for a ski-plane sight-seeing flight over the glaciers from Juneau. The itinerary included the Norris, Taku, Hole-in-the-Wall, East and West Twin glaciers of the Juneau Icefield. It was an exhilarating and wonderful flight, the best we have done. The sky cleared and the sun shone throughout the flight, and we saw the icy blue of the crevices and folds of the glaciers, the verdant green of the deltas, and the majesty of God’s creation. .
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