Newcastle Hang Gliding Club

My earliest recollection of the Morning Glory was probably an article in Skysailor (now Soaring Australia) published after the first non-powered hang glider pilots flew it. That was ten years ago when CMac, Al Giles, Billo and PK made their first pilgrimage to Burketown.

I saw my first picture of a Morning Glory on a website called Dropbears.com. The pages at;
http://www.dropbears.com/brough/ had been authored by a powered sailplane pilot who had been flying the wave since 1989. This site is an excellent source of information and images of the Morning Glory and a lot more.

My interest and subsequent reading of all the Morning Glory pages at Dropbears was the result of finding out that Billo and Al were organising a 2005 expedition to Burketown in memory of CMac. Apparently there was a spare seat. As it turned out this was all part of Billo's cunning plan to get me to drive his second car and to video the event. I had been singled out has having some sort of a knack with a video camera and an editing suite after the success of the Dalby DVD.

I just had to convince my wife and family of the value of this once in a lifetime experience. This was not going to be easy since there was no guarantee that the Morning Glory would even come in and JOD's was responsible for the trip planning and his itinerary had us travelling some 8,000 kms. This alone would cost a fortune in petrol.

To my delight and the envy of my work mates my wife, Tanya, was very understanding. She would have to run the house and look after the kids for four weeks without me so I knew the sacrifice she was making.

None of us wanted to think about the fact that we may not even see a Morning Glory but we all had to sign on knowing that our trip could be morning gloryless. At least we would get to see parts of Australia that most people don't. We were to drive from Newcastle, in NSW, to Hawker in SA. Here we could fly Wilpena Pound. Then we would get on the Birdsville Track to take us through to QLD. From there it was up to Burketown, our final destination in the tropical north of Australia.