I decided to treat myself to a hot-air balloon ride over the desert. I was picked up at 5:20 am, and from there we went to pick up five other aeronauts before heading for the desert south of Alice, and south of the MacDonnell Range. We are the only balloon taking off today (slow season I guess), and when we got to our little patch of nowhere the crew unpacked the balloon from the trailer that seems to be an integral part of 70% of Australian vehicles. Once it was laid on the ground we were invited to get out of the bus to see the inflation of the balloon, which is a very thrilling sight. As balloons go, ours would qualify as being small, with a small basket, but then again there will only be six tourists and Captain Duncan on board.
The Cap released a helium party balloon with a tea light attached to it, to judge the changes in the direction of the wind as altitude increases, and then we were ready to board. The balloon roars every time the burner goes off, but otherwise the takeoff is gentle and in slow motion. Dawn was just breaking over the East MacDonnell range but we were drifting due west, toward the Alice Springs airport. I was hoping we were going to soar over the range, but there are restrictions on that area, so we were pretty much confined to the vast desert to the south.
We saw a handful of cattle in the distance, and learnt that the rule of thumb is one head of cattle per 10 square kilometers, or one head of cattle per 40 square kilometers during the dry. The central desert just went through a drought from 2017 to 2022, so cattle are pretty sparse these days in the enormous paddocks of each station. Dry stream courses are very much in evidence.
The sun finally peeked out from behind the range, and the desert lighted up in tones of tan, red, and green. Very pretty. Down there we saw a kangaroo family with Joey, Mom, and Dad cautiously hopping away from the balloon. Dad is big!
By this time we had been joined by a couple of eagles that were making circles over the balloon. They must be intrigued by this monster, but the Cap told us that they also enjoy the thermals bleeding off the top.
The Cap was very good, and kept us on course, sometimes climbing and sometimes going down. The landing was perfectly smooth, and no more than 100 m from where our bus and crew were waiting for us. Then came the grand production of deflating the balloon, folding it, and stuffing it back in its box, followed by loading the basket on the trailer, before celebrating our accomplishment with a flute of champagne (apparently a tradition started in 1783 in France, after the first successful manned flight). Leonardo da Vinci first conceived the lifting of objects with hot air, but for many centuries nobody tried it because they believed the air was too thin (or maybe even poisonous) to support life. The attempt was done in the mid 1700's with a rooster, a mouse, and a cat, and when they landed in good shape the suggestion wa made that convicts could be used to test human resistance to high altitude; but then a couple of aristocrats realized that if convicts had that first the whole enterprise would be tainted, so they hopped aboard and the rest is history.
Back in town I took my sweet time to check out of the hotel, but my bus to Darwin was scheduled to depart at 5:30 pm, so I had a good 6 hours to kill. I decided to go to the public library, to check out their exhibition of Nevil Shute books. There was no special exhibition, but they had a shelf with his books, so I had a good time browsing through them. Now, I have mentioned Nevil Shute before as a novelist who I like very much. I was introduced to his books by Tom Olson, maybe a couple of years ago, and since then I have become a fan. He is a master at placing normal people in unusual situations that force them to push themselves to the limit. My favorite novels, which I heartily recommend, ar A Town Like Alice, Trustee of the Toolroom, and The Pied Piper. He was an English aeronautical engineer who participated in World War I, and was involved in some secret aviation projects in World War II. He published 24 novels and novellas between 1924 and 1959, just before his passing in 1960. He emigrated to Australia in 1950, and many of his novels have to do with life in the outback. Other two recurring themes in his work are aviation and ships, no doubt reflecting his two favorite hobbies. Now, enter the problem: Books published between 1924 and 1959 are not easy to find, so I may have read only about half of his work. Here, in the public library at Alice Springs I had the opportunity to browse through some of his less known work: The Seafarers, Stephen Morris, Pilotage, Landfall to mention a few. I didn't have enough time to read them all, so I chose the novella The Seafarers and enjoyed reading it from cover to cover without interruptions.
I also looked through the library for other interesting books, and among the many I pulled out of the shelves I took some time browsing through Scorched Earth, the government-issued plan to deal with a potential Japanese invasion during World War II. The Japanese rapidly invaded The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and were finally slowed down in the mountains and islands of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands by the Americans. The Australians were only protected by the Timor Sea and the Torres Strait, and in fact Darwin was bombed on more than one occasion. The danger of invasion was therefore very real. So the Australian people were instructed to "scorch the land" in case of invasion, to deny the invaders access to water, wells/bores, fuel, vehicles, machinery, tools, and food. It was not to be chaotic destruction, but carefully thought destruction of anything that the enemy could find useful (unlike the Germans, in their rapid invasions the Japanese had relied on commandeering the resources of the invaded areas, rather than on their own supply lines). I am not a World War buff, but I was suitably impressed by the extent to which the Australians were ready to go to expel an invader.
Oh, oh, my bus just pulled in and I have to go. Alice to Darwin in 22 hours!
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