Born To Fly Read online

  I said goodbye as I hopped into the car and sped off towards the motel. So far so good. However, I soon learned that I had left something out of our risk mitigation document: travelling by road in Sri Lanka. Road rules were non-existent, each car seemed to have the option of full throttle or full brakes, nothing in between. The first lesson appeared to be ‘how to just miss everything’. Then there was the mystifying use of the horn. At the strangest times the driver would stand on the horn and appear to lose his mind in a fit of road rage, but when a car almost T-boned our taxi he didn’t move an inch, no horn, nothing. I didn’t think you could be approved for a scooter or motorbike licence if you had any reason to want to continue living.

  I stepped out of the cab still shaking and paid the driver, giving him a tip for delivering me to the motel in a semi-conscious and relatively sane state. I checked in and dropped my bags inside the door of my room. Despite the near-lethal cab ride I was still hungry. I had called Lincoln Howes, the producer for the 60 Minutes story, just after touching down, and even though he was a fair distance away he had decided to make his way to my motel for a catch-up. I was looking forward to seeing him: I would get to chat with another familiar face and with only one day in Sri Lanka we could organise the filming in between refuelling and the other jobs.

  When he arrived I shouted him a beer, which I figured he would need as much as I did. We had a few more before he had to drive back to his motel. We chatted away about the flight so far; even though emails had been exchanged I had not seen the 60 Minutes crew since the AirVenture airshow in Oshkosh, USA, around a month before. It was great.

  I said goodbye and organised to meet the following morning at the crew’s motel closer to the city. I made my way to my room, jumped into bed and just lay there thinking.

  Being in Colombo felt odd. I had always wanted to travel to the USA and had done so before my trip. Europe was always appealing and countries such as Iceland and the Pacific Islands had been exciting. But I had never wanted to go to Sri Lanka, I had never really thought about it much. We had chosen Colombo because it seemed a logical stopping place, and from then on it had become a name, one of many included destinations. But to actually be in Sri Lanka was strange, to be in a culture that was so different and in an environment far from anything I had experienced before was truly eye-opening, as I was shortly to discover.

  As a tourist, you usually hop off the plane with all your belongings in hand. You trek around the sites with a camera and a backpack. The greatest source of stress is watching what you eat and keeping track of your passport, but little else causes too much worry. I had been a tourist many times before and loved that feeling, but travelling in the Cirrus was very, very different.

  I felt more directly involved in what I was doing every day. I was constantly thinking and working towards the next goal, challenge or job. I didn’t feel like a tourist, there was more to the situation than just me. I had an aircraft in my possession and I worried about that constantly. Was it where I put it? Was it being watched? What did I need to do to keep on top of anything that could happen at any time? Had I forgotten something? Beyond the day-to-day duties was also the constant worry that something might go wrong, I knew all too well what that would mean in the media and who that would affect. It was my job to prevent that from happening.

  All these were feelings and worries that had begun the morning I departed the Australian coastline. Although they dwindled here and there when I was having fun, such as when I was riding that Vespa in France, they were always on my mind. I knew they would stay there until the day the Cirrus was parked back at home. At this point in the trip, I couldn’t wait for that moment. More than anything else I wanted to be home.

  Whether I was flying that day or not, the alarm always rang early to remind me of how much I had to do. On this day I was being picked up in a van that the 60 Minutes crew had sent from their motel with the hope it would provide a more sedate ride than a local taxi.

  It didn’t. We cheated death time after time, and my tendency to believe in a higher power strengthened a little more for each kilometre we survived. I decided it was best to take my focus away from the road and look at what Sri Lanka had to offer instead, or at least whatever I could see of it through the blur of the windscreen.

  Travelling in a car, taxi or a van to and from the motel or airport was one of the rare times I was able to take a look around each destination. During this particular ride into Colombo, which lasted an hour, I could see the Sri Lankan streets lined with shacks and each small business operating out of nothing more than a tin shed. There was traffic everywhere, it was chaotic and nothing defined the moment where the road ended and the sidewalk began. The levels of poverty were shocking, the way of life and standard of living were far from anything I had seen before. Yet little did I know I had not even reached the slums.

  I will never forget crossing a little bridge that spanned a murky, thin river filled with opaque brown water. On either side were makeshift shacks that actually touched the stream. People had set up their homes on the riverbanks, homes that could barely be classed as adequate shelter. It was something I had seen only in school geography lessons: my teacher, Mr Daniels was an absolute champion. He had grown up in India and shared so much about his home country and the surrounding areas such as Sri Lanka. I had seen these images on a Friday afternoon documentary in the classroom, but not in real life until now.

  The slums disappeared behind the van as we vibrated violently along the road. The shaking could have been caused by the potholes, or most likely the buffeting around the Toyota Hiace as we approached the speed of sound. I just wanted to get out. This driver was nuts.

  We finally arrived at a fancy motel and I walked inside to find Charles Woolley and the crew sitting in the lobby. I sat down and began to fill them all in on the happenings of the last few weeks. There were countless stories to be told. We also decided that I would set off to find an ATM and withdraw cash to pay for the fuel before filming a scene at the local markets. We would then take a ride in a tuktuk, a semi-stable three-wheeled form of popular transport consisting of a small motorbike modified with the addition of a ‘cabin’. The rider sat in the front with passengers in the back, and the open sides meant holding on tightly was something of a must. After the tuktuk ride I would make my way to the airport to refuel and would fill the plane on my own before attempting to make it back to the crew for a quick segment at sunset overlooking the ocean. It all sounded simple.

  After piling the camera equipment into the back, we all hopped into the van so the same driver who had picked me up earlier in the day could take us to the markets. It was a fifteen-minute drive combining laughter, disbelief and fear, and it all seemed great fun largely because I wasn’t on my own. We were dropped off at what I was told were the true local markets, a place hidden away from tourists in the back lots of Colombo. It didn’t take long to see what they meant. We were the only white people in sight, sandwiched among the locals out shopping for their groceries.

  We stood by the van as the locals watched and the sound guy, who had a habit of sticking his hand up everyone’s shirt, fiddled around to secure a small microphone out of sight. We had a quick chat about the plan before setting off for a walk through the markets. I soon noticed every eye was on us. I strolled along casually with Charlie as one of the crew lugged the huge camera and the sound guy held a microphone on a boom over our head. Our goal was to catch a snippet of the culture of Sri Lanka; one experience of many during a journey through fifteen different countries.

  We stopped by a Sri Lankan man and a crowd gathered around as we admired his selection of chillies. They were green and towered in cane baskets placed on the ground. He also sat on the ground behind his produce patiently waiting for a customer but I don’t think we were quite what he expected. Charles asked for ‘a chilli’, a single chilli, and handed over a Sri Lankan bill. The man smiled and immediately set to work, he grabbed a plastic bag and began filling it with hundreds of g
reen chillies. Regardless of what we tried to say, he wouldn’t stop, not until his scales had reached one kilogram.

  We wanted one chilli, we now had one kilogram of chillies. I was all for value for money, but this was insane. All we could do was laugh. The growing crowd watched as Charles removed a single green chilli from the bag and broke it in half and in unison we took a bite and began to chew. The locals, who spoke very little English, began to laugh hysterically. They could see our faces and knew I thought I was going to die. Again. Not only that, but I was picturing the confined cockpit of the Cirrus and imagining the long flight to Indonesia scheduled for the following morning. I had a feeling this chilli was travelling on a return ticket.

  Only moments after handing the full bag of chillies back to the salesman, complete with a ‘no refund required’, another Sri Lankan man popped up in front of me with something that resembled an elderly tomato. He didn’t speak a lot of English but ‘this chilli hottest ever’ wasn’t the best sales pitch he could have gone with. We smiled at the locals and said goodbye to the chilli salesman. I think he stills holds the record for the highest profit earned from a single transaction.

  We continued on through aisles of food stalls and the smells, the sights and the atmosphere were amazing. As we chatted away Charles was picking up strange food, including dried fish that lay in the sun, but the locals knew we weren’t there to purchase anything, they just wanted to be involved, jumping in front of the camera at every chance they got.

  We waved goodbye and began the logistical nightmare of organising two tuktuks to ride alongside each other and yet somehow end up back where we started. Charlie and I clambered in one whilst the camera and sound guy hopped in another. We scooted in and out of traffic, one hand gripping the handle and the other pointing in awe at the sights of Sri Lanka.

  In the rush of trying to capture all the shots they were looking for, along with making it to the airport to refuel, it was easy to overlook what was actually going on at that very moment. I was in a tuktuk with Charles Woolley, being chased by a camera crew through the streets of Sri Lanka, all for a program to be run on national television based around the story of my wildest, most out-there dream. All of this just for an ordinary kid from the Sapphire Coast. A prime example of what can be achieved with courage and commitment.

  Our jobs for the morning were complete, we dropped the crew and the camera gear at the motel and the driver and I continued towards the airport. Three of us spoke with the driver, giving him directions and trying to tell him to wait at the airport until I was finished. It was a hopeless effort and although we thought he had the plan correct we would only know when I wandered back from refuelling to find a ride back to the motel or an empty car space.

  The day fled by as I met my handler, we worked our way through security and began to empty the Cirrus. Just as in Muscat the fuel truck was delayed, but this time when it arrived it had three forty-four-gallon drums of avgas sitting on a trailer. Fortunately the fuel had been organised well before my arrival; the three drums put aside for the Cirrus was all the avgas available in Sri Lanka. Without that fuel I would be stuck in Colombo.

  A couple of hours passed as we carefully filled the tank. I was constantly thinking of the next leg, eleven hours to Padang in Indonesia the following morning, and therefore added each and every drop from the three drums. We refuelled, strapped and secured the tank and repacked. The Cirrus was good to go.

  I walked outside the terminal and began to look for my driver. It had been three hours since he had dropped me off but he suddenly popped up in front of me, enthusiastic as ever, and asked whether I was ready to leave. I had no idea whether he understood anything I had said that day, but he sure had been patient.

  We missed the sunset after the delayed refuelling process but managed to find a restaurant and have dinner before bed. It was strange to be sitting around a table discussing the next major event: the moment I would land back in Wollongong.

  I said goodbye to the 60 Minutes crew who were due to catch an early flight out of Colombo the next morning and beat me home by a couple of weeks. I survived the final commute from the centre of Colombo to my motel and sifted through the flight plan and paperwork before bed. I had sent an email earlier that day to confirm one final time, after several emails over several months, that avgas was still available in Padang. This was the last time I would need to do this, as after Padang I would be ‘direct to’ Broome on the west coast of Australia. Then I got an email in reply:

  ‘Mr Campbell, No, sorry, no avgas in Padang. Thank you.’

  Oh. Great. As I had done so often before, I called Mike Gray from White Rose Aviation in the UK. Mike had organised every overflight and landing clearance and their limited validity meant that any changes in plan would require a little teamwork and understanding of when we could legally fly. Besides this, it was part of Mike’s everyday job to safely navigate a range of pilots and aircraft across the globe, so he had a phenomenal understanding about where avgas was available around the world.

  It was now late as Mike and I ran through the options. I kept telling myself that when stressed it is really easy to make a simple situation more complicated than it needs to be, so I had to step back and look at the big picture. This was simple: There was no fuel in Padang in Indonesia and if I flew to Padang I would be stuck. The only avgas in Indonesia was in Jakarta and a quick flight plan showed that if the aircraft was full of fuel it had the range to make it there. The problem was that Sri Lanka’s complete supply of avgas was already in the Cirrus, and that wasn’t enough to make it to Jakarta. Clearly I was not going to be departing for Indonesia the following morning.

  Mike suggested adding a stopover in Malaysia but at this hour we both agreed any decision to re-plan to a new destination and still depart the following morning would have been ridiculous and dangerous. I called the lobby to cancel my taxi, emailed home to update them on the changes and turned off my alarm. I would go to bed and work towards a solution with Mike the following day. It meant another full day in Sri Lanka and would put us a day behind, but the options were few and far between.

  CHAPTER

  23

  To Malaysia

  There was no doubt that I had found myself in a challenging part of the world: a place where simple things could become complicated, where the language barrier could cause problems and vital yet straightforward requirements such as keeping track of available fuel could take a turn for the unexpected at the very last minute.

  During the planning, after speaking with dozens of ferry pilots, I learned that the main logistical challenges would most likely occur between Egypt and home. This had already come true. Greece had provided a surprising challenge because of the strange woman. We had diverted to Jordan because of the crisis in Egypt but not until after six hours and two dozen flight plans had been rejected because of restrictions around Israeli airspace. Muscat turned out to be a fort, the security changed our refuelling plans and coupled with a late fuel truck the departure was pushed back, causing the arrival into Sri Lanka to take place at night. Now our fuel plans in Indonesia, which had been in place for months, had fallen away from us.

  The question at the moment was: what had happened to the fuel we had been told was safely in Padang, Indonesia? We had confirmed the availability of avgas via email only days before.

  A full day of phone calls and emails with ‘Uncle Mike’ from White Rose ended in a solution. I would now fly from Colombo to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. We had organised a handler to meet upon my arrival and refuel immediately. Because I was adding a leg to the journey and was already a day behind schedule, I would take off early the next morning and fly to Jakarta. There I would refuel and depart the following morning for Broome. It was constant flying, but it was best to move quickly through these countries and make it back to Australia, something I was looking forward to beyond anything I could explain.

  I woke early the following morning with a freshly assembled flight plan; more importantly, I
had to set my mind on a new destination. It was pretty depressing. All I could think about was returning to stand on Australian soil but it seemed to be getting further away. I had been counting down the legs until that happened and using it as my source of inspiration to take another flight over water, but now we had added another stopover.

  When I arrived at the Colombo airport my handler led me to the weather briefing room, and after fifteen minutes of currency exchange enabling me to pay my bill I went through security. My large supply of US cash had disappeared with great speed, and finding a place to withdraw money throughout the last few destinations had been a bigger challenge than I had imagined. With the cash finally sorted we made our way outside and onto the tarmac, where I boarded a bus and set off towards the Cirrus to prepare it for a departure.

  I kept glancing at my watch as I removed the covers and completed a pre-flight inspection by torchlight. The flight plan submitted before every leg of the trip not only outlined details of the aircraft, the pilot and the route, but gave a designated time for departure, allowing air traffic control to sequence you in with other aircraft leaving around the same time. For once I was early and though I had a few more little jobs I still had forty-five minutes before my scheduled takeoff.

  My handler, who had been on the phone while I worked on the aircraft, ran towards me with a worried look on his face. The prime minister of Sri Lanka was due to touch down in fifteen minutes. If I was not airborne by then I would be grounded, they couldn’t tell me for how long, just for a ‘significant delay’.

  No one should have to move that quickly at that time of the morning. I clambered into my seat and had the aircraft running while I was still trying to put my seat belts on. As soon as the engine was warm I was on the move and programming the avionics as I went, a tip passed on to me in Oshkosh by Jack Weigand, the then world record holder as the youngest pilot to circumnavigate the globe. Jack’s advice about programming the avionics meant that putting in a flight plan wasn’t such a mind-numbing job. It wasn’t the only piece of advice he gave me; in an hour of casual conversation he passed on many little tips and tricks concerning the flight. Jack congratulated me on the flight so far and expressed his belief and trust that I would finish it successfully. My ‘what was it like to…’ questions had all been answered, and I had left Oshkosh with the most important tool of all, a little more self-confidence thanks to his encouragement.