Flights in vintage aeroplanes and walking around Dunedin

PHIL: Day 49/4 Apr

getting hooked!

Well Ryan was wrong. It is a perfect windless, stable, gin-clear morning. Problem is he has to drive to some other airfield to collect two 40-gallon drums of AvGas and, though we are at Mandeville by 1000 Ryan isn’t ready to fly until midday. 

We look nervously at gathering cumulus, but in fact nothing much develops and at 1206 we are aboard the 1934-built Fox Moth at 500ft over the pastoral scene of sheep country and trout rivers. 

Only a few minutes afterwards we exchange the Moth for a slightly younger (1936) Dragonfly, another of Geoffrey de Havilland’s magnificent creations. Allie, who up to now has been pretty neutral about aeroplanes, is captivated by the 1930s nostalgia for tautened silver fabric and polished spruce.

and that's lovely too!

No sooner are we done with flying than another temptation hoves in sight. The airfield restaurant, appropriately called ‘The Moth’, is for sale along with some surrounding development land adjacent to the hangars. It looks very attractive and, on contacting the vendors, we find the price is also attractive. We start plotting how we might run balloon operations, get my restaurateur son to run the restaurant, let out hangars, start vintage aircraft tours…….

At Speights’ brewery pub in Dunedin later that evening the planning continues, without too much wine to lubricate the brain (mainly because Allie spilt most of it in some grand hand gesture). Dunedin doesn’t inspire us despite its reputation as a lively university town.

ALLIE: DAY 49: Wednesday, 4^th of March

A flight in some rare vintage aeroplanes and exploring faceless Dunedin

A beautiful morning despite all the bad forecast warnings. Jogging around Gore doesn’t really inspire you very much but the air is fresh and the morning light wonderful. Let’s hope it stays like this because this day is VERY important to my dear husband. He has arranged for the two of us to fly in two very rare old types of aeroplanes that are only to be found here in New Zealand and are the only ones left of their type. So we drive up to nearby Mandeville and wait for nearly 2 hrs for our pilot Ryan to get ready with the aircrafts being refuelled and checked.

Finally around midday we take off in a red ‘Foxmoth’ built in 1934 and take to the skies Phil and I sitting in the front facing each other whilst Ryan commands the double winged propeller aircraft from behind us sitting slightly elevated. The flight takes us across the pretty landscape of Mandeville with its wide fields, a broad river and the rolling hills. Quite a nice area to fly a balloon, we both think! The flight is a bit bumpy even though the weather is fantastic and couldn’t be better. I decide that I still prefer my good ol’ balloon to any other form of aviation. I don’t ever get motion sick in a balloon but I certainly do in these little aircraft.

Still – it’s a great experience and I don’t regret it.

Landing is very smooth and hardly on the ground we take to the skies again but this time in a ‘Dragonfly’ built in 1936. I may sit in the cockpit right hand side and watch Rian doing all his flight checks etc. I really could get used to this cockpit flying I must say. Everything seems to be much more reliable and safe. And so is this flight. Landing is smooth again and I even have the feeling that I could handle this. Not too many instruments, a lot done by feeling and eyesight… why not?

Still, I am glad to be on the ground again and we celebrate these fantastic flights with a Whiskey and some coffee at the ‘Moth Restaurant’. This lovely place turns out to be for sale. The whole tasteful restaurant and bar including lots of ground for only around 700.000 NZ Dollar. Phil and I start dreaming. What if we were to…?

We could run a ballooning school and some rides here, put up a little hotel etc. The landscape is perfect for ballooning and the surroundings might attract some visitors. And it’s so cheap! But: it’s still f.. miles from anywhere and no big airport nearby and not even a single decent pub around. How could we survive in this place?

On to Dunedin, a large university town at the east coast. The town sounded attractive (at least by what the Lonely Planet said) but to us it turned out to be quite a disappointment. After checking in at the rather basic Backpacker’s Elm Lodge (toilets miles down the basement!) we walk downtown and try to find the interesting bits of Dunedin. Unfortunately there aren’t many.

The harbour front is nothing but ugly factories and store houses and the main street a row of modern faceless concrete buildings. The only worthwhile places to us are the Court house and the fire station, and the two main churches. Somehow everything here reminds me very much of Scotland. And that’s exactly where most of the early settlers had come from.

The huge Robert Burns statue in the Octagon Square is enough proof , so is the Speight brewery where we end up to have our dinner and a few pints (actually we drink wine instead of beer and the stuff this time is called ‘Angus the bull’!!). James Speight brought the drink here in 1876 and it’s until now the largest brewery in New Zealand.