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Flying around Lake Urana.

There is a WW2 story about American pilots departing Townsville, Queensland for New Guinea. The story goes like this. They were instructed to takeoff, turn left, keep Australia on the left and that will take you to New Guinea. Well several kept Australia on the left, continued to keep Australia on the left until their gas was exhausted. They had reached the top of Australia, turned left heading west and left again heading south. They run out of gas in the Gulf of Carpentaria. End of part 1.

Part 2. It was in the late 90’s and I departed Finley for Boree Creek, about 50 minutes to the north east. Weather was a strong south westerly wind, low cloud with showers and visibility of about 500 yards. I was to spread urea fertilizer at Boree Creek and farmers love to apply just before or during rain. If not washed in the nitrogen component will leach from the fertilizer into the atmosphere. Miserable working conditions, just the sort of day you’d be pleased to stay home.

I had intercepted Lake Urana on the south west side and flew the western side which was enroute to my destination. I was about 200 feet and getting wet. I’ve never flown an ag aeroplane which was water proof. I noticed the wind had changed which was unusual for a strong wind and I noticed a town which I couldn’t identify. Then it occurred to me I had flown around Lake Urana, now heading back south west from where I came. I did just exactly what those pilots did in the north of Australia. And this from an experienced pilot. The wind hadn’t changed of course and the town was Urana, a town that I knew well. Today with GPS this would not have happened. The map at the bottom of this story will show you. Now you may well ask why you didn’t pick this up on your compass. I have never ever known a compass in an ag aeroplane to work. They carry a steel undercarriage legs of more than 200 pounds of steel and most ag planes have been flown through power wires which destroys all magnetic alignments which may have existed at the time of manufacture. To remove erroneous compass readings one degausses the aeroplane with an electrically charged wand that disrupts or eliminates the magnetic field of the aeroplane. It has never worked for me and I have not endeavoured to carry out this procedure for years.

So no navigation prizes for Gary that day.