That’s right, on 21 Sept 2008 with my arrival back in Melbourne, my overseas adventure has come to an end. What a grand adventure it was, 1170 days or 3 years, 2 months and 12 days of shennanigans! I’m fully aware that today is the 6th of Oct but I’ve never been that good at keeping my blog up-to-date. Hopefully that will change now that I’m back home, although admittedly it hasn’t gotten off to a good start. Nuts.
Having sorted my life out I’ve come to the conclusion that unfortunately there is no future for me in Africa. Add to that my desire to once again be at home amongst (no, not the gum trees!) my friends and family it was the logical decision to make. The other main deciding fact was whilst home last time I managed to wangle a ride in a helicopter, boy what a magical ride it was. It also convinced me that that was what I really should be doing. Hence I finished things up in Africa and returned home to head down the road of becoming a commercial helicopter pilot. We’re currently in the process of whittling down our selection of schools and coming up with the best way to achieve the theory and practical study required. I’m planning to keep and extensive blog of my flying activities whilst learning so won’t bore youse anymore with it here.
As I said I’ve been back in Melbourne since 21 Sept. I arrived in Syd on 17 Sept and spent a few days in Syd with Pete & Megs, Dad also made the trip up too. With Megs on stage all that week, Pete managed to wrangle a few days off work and the boys spent Thur, Fri, Sat and Sunday enjoying ourselves. Originally it was the plan that I would live in Syd till the end of the year to get my Private Pilots Licence (PPL) in fixed wing aircraft before returning to Melb after Christmast to convert to helicopters and go through to my Commerical Pilots Licence (CPL(H)). So we spent a day out at Bankstown Airport checking out fixed wing schools there. Quite a pleasant day and we learned a lot. Namely that there are a lotta ’sausage factory’ type schools out there, pumping through foreign students who are all competing for instructor and flying time. Not the place you really wanna learn. (and they fall outta the sky occasionally http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/second-indian-student-pilot-killed/2008/09/25/1222217388741.html). However after talking to the helicopter schools down here, we’ve determined it’s best to go all the way through on helicopters, because you’ll end up with more total hours in helicopters, which is all that really matters when going for heli jobs. Mum was very happy to hear that I’d be back living with her for at least the next 6 months (no, really)!!
Since my arrival back in Melbourne I’ve been keeping fairly low key, most of my energies have been devoted to getting all my flying and related stuff organised. Catching up with the family and even seeing a few friends. As per usual in this situation for me, there are a bunch of people who don’t even know I’m actually back in the country… That’ll change no doubt. I turned 31 during last week and that was also a low key affair. Couldn’t possibly compete with my 30th, where I was in Kruger Park and saw Big 5 in one day, so didn’t really bother. A lunch, a dinner and a few drinks last Friday were all that I bothered with. I don’t seem to get all excited about it anymore, does that mean I’m offically old? Dammit!