Day 6: Gladstone to Townsville, and a hook up with friends.

Gladstone had works going on at the airfield that meant I couldn’t refuel, I technically had enough to get to Townsville, but I really like to fly with a few hours reserves (I can put up to 15 hours of fuel in the plane) so I made a stop at Rockhampton to quickly top up. This took me away from the following the beach, but I was kinda stuck with that for this morning anyway because a military exercise on the coast had made a long stretch of beach off limits to all civilian aircraft. So I had to head inland anyway, and once joined back up with coast, noticed the oddly named (at the top left of the map) Avoid Island, which I guess has always had a problem getting people to visit… I also gave it a wide berth just to be sure…

Now, this is where something kinda cool happened… a few weeks back I got a call from Wing Commander Steve Thornton of RAAF 6 squadron, and that they were planning to do a circumnavigation too, they seemed all over what I was doing and wanted to arrange to rendezvous in Townsville. Okey dokey - I was so on board! It was very carefully planned, that we had a point inbound to Townsville that 8 would establish myself on and that they would then fly a pair of EA18 Grolwers either side of me, for an escort and photo op, as part of commemorating the centenary. Well, it all went off without a hitch and will be one of the most memorable moments of my life - thanks to Steve and Patrick and the whole team. Huzzah indeed.