Flyaway to Open Gardens

Never let a state border get in the way of a good Open Garden, I always say.

Last weekend, a group of us got together and flew down from Sydney and Bathurst to the Macedon Ranges, about an hour's drive north of Melbourne, and landed at the beautiful Kyneton airfield.

Warren, CFI Mike and half a dozen other members of the Kyneton Aero Club welcomed us warmly when we got there, and went out of their way to make us feel confortable, and help us with the many and varied queries we had about their neck of the woods.

Thank you Kyneton! What a great place to base ourselves - there's so much to do around here!

There were 11 of us so we hired a mini bus for the weekend - too easy. Rossy and I didn't get out of Sydney on the Friday as we'd have been doing battle with some pretty spirited thunderstorms over the Blue Mountains so we flew down on Saturday morning. But we still managed to pack loads of special memories into the weekend.

I love gardening, so wandering through the magnificent Stonefields Garden and nearby Musk Garden was a real highlight. Stephanie Alexander was at Stonefields with the owner/landscaper Paul Bangay, both autographing copies of their respective books for people.All this area around Daylesford is stunning countryside, so even though we copped our fair share of drizzly weather, the drives were all very memorable.

Salli-Ann Ward from WardAir at Bathurst organised the itinerary for us, so we didn't even have to think all weekend. How I love that! We stayed at Campaspe House in a little town called Woodend on Saturday night and had dinner at Zarby's - a great bistro in town.

We definitely needed the IFR hats on for the flight home on Sunday, all character-building and good practice climbing up through thick cloud to a cruising altitude of 7000ft coming home. As usual, ATC was fantastic, so accommodating. I'm starting to feel comfortable with the G1000 glass cockpit in LJE, the fabulous C182 that I hire from Curtis Aviation at Camden, and am really looking forward to getting to know all its various nuances over the coming months. A non-complicated, fairly short distance weekend flyaway like this one is precisely the way to put that practice in. Total hours 6.1.

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