Townsville (19°15' S, 146°49' E) is in North Queensland, in the tropics, and has a population of just under 200,000. It's main charm are "the Strand", a very long beach area with lines of palmtrees and walkways, kids playing areas and public fitness facilities, Castle Hill, a 997ft high rock and sandstone hill in the middle of the city, and Magnetic Island, a pictoresque island just a few kilometres off the coast from Townsville. I also enjoy the rockpool, a massive swimming pool at the western end of the strand surrounded by rocks and filled every day with fresh ocean water. The rockpool is ideal, beacuse between the months of November and May it's very dangerous to swim in the ocean because of the high amounts of marine stingers (jellyfish) present.

Townsville experiences a few very wet months during southern hemisphere summer, and then enjoys many months of relatively nice weather and confortable temperatures (15°-25°C) during the winter.




Townsville Airport is operated by the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) and sees a large variety of aeroplanes and helicopters takeoff and land. The main runway is 8KM long and supports airliners from Qantas, Virgin Blue, Alliance, Rex and Strategic (A320, B737-700 and -800, Embraer 170 and 190, Saab A340 and A330's) as well as military F/A-18's, PC-12's, Hawks, C-17 Globemasters, P-3 Orions, Chinooks and Black Hawks, etc. We also see many government and police jets flying around politicians and even prisoners.
The main runway is 01/19 and the smaller runway, 07/25, is used by smaller GA aircraft when the airport gets busy.





The photos above are from my visit to the Billabong Sanctuary, just south of Townsville. It's a wildlife park where you can see all kinds of Australian animals, including kangaroos and wallabies, koalas, crocodiles, snakes, cassowaries, birds, turtles, and even a wombat (endangered species).
There are shows at certain times where they feed the crocodiles, talk about koalas or play with the wombat. Paying extra money you can also get a photo with a koala, a wombat or a small crocodile. I got some photos because I really wanted to hold the wombat and the koala, they're like live teddies, really cute and cuddly!



UNDARA EXPERIENCE!



While waiting for the Air Operator Certificate, for our new company, Townsville Aviation Centre, we went to the Undara Lodge to organize some scenic flights. We had planned to have the AOC by then, but CASA hadn't released it yet, so we did a few free scenic flights with Undara Lodge staff. Undara is a national park with volcanoes and lava tubes, and they had a country music festival on that weekend.



They have a grass stip about 2KM from the resort. It's pretty long and the surface is nice when the grass has been mowed but it has a 2% slope, so we only use it as a "one way strip". You can do a nice scenic flight over the volcanoes and lava tubes in only 15 minutes! We also drove up a few 200L AVGAS drums to manually refuel the aeroplanes so they would never have more than 80L of fuel, to be able to carry 1 pilot and 3 passengers.



Before leaving on Monday morning we went for a quick excursion to the lava tubes with a guide, and saw several interesting snakes, including this death adder above!




Sunday 25th of April 2010

ANZAC DAY FORMATION FLIGHT!
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For ANZAC Day (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) our new CFI Graeme and a new friend, Alan, did a formation flight in a C172S and a CT-4 over the ANZAC parade in Townsville. We practiced the day before (I sat in the C172 with Graeme) in the training area with the callsign "ANZAC FORMATION" and then we flew on the 25th of April.



I might be doing some formation training in upcoming months in the C172!