Outback Queensland

Outback Queensland
(YLRE-YBMA)
For November 19, 2022
Michael MacKuen

Today we fly in Outback Queensland. We shall see the territory of classic station life that has lent so much to the national Australian culture. And we shall get a chance to see mines that have produced some of contemporary Australia’s wealth. Of special interest, we shall see two historical landmarks of Australian aviation: the birthplace of Qantas (the national airline) and the initial operating base for the Royal Australian Doctor Service.


Climbing out of Coolullah Station

In 1920, two wartime pilots and a partner took a chance on the future of aviation. It was in Winton (see ahead) that they formed the one-plane company Queensland and Northern Territory Aviation Service (Qantas). (Happily they dropped the original ordering, NTAQAS.) But it was in Longreach that they established their operational headquarters in 1921. The first scheduled service was from Longreach to Cloncurry. In their early days, they did air taxi flights, gave joyrides, ran government air mail, and even built their own aircraft. In 1928 they flew the first flight for the RFDS in Cloncurry. Then, in 1934, Qantas joined with Britain’s Imperial Airways to create an international line connecting Australia and Singapore and then London. In 1947 it was nationalized as the Australian flagship airline and then became a largely successful international and then national carrier, flying Lockheed Constellations, Boeing 707s, and then Boeing 747s. When Qantas was integrated into the domestic network, the airline was privatized and the fleet was diversified.

We depart from Longreach [YLRE]. Qantas has established the “Qantas Founders Outback Museum” here. Notably, the museum has on display replicas of an Avro 504 and DH.50 (inside) and then restored instances of a DC-3, PBY Catalina, Constellation, B707, and B747 each in Qantas colors to represent the airlines 100 year history. [The default simulator depiction is worth a few minutes’ look, perhaps in “drone” view.] You might be interested in visitor videos here and here.

Our first stop is Darr River Downs Station [YDRE]. Starting in the 1870s, local runs were acquired by a sequence of men who started with cattle and then turned to sheep. By 1898, the partnership owned about eleven hundred square miles – one of the three largest stations in Queensland at the time. It remains in the hands of owners who can draw a lineage to the initial founders. The sheep station is now listed on the Queensland Heritage Register as representative of the evolution of the state’s pastoral industry. (The MFS rendition is merely generic.)

Next is Winton [YWTN], a small town of some local importance. It was founded by a man who established a public house that eventually attracted other settlers who set up a commercial center. By the 1880s it had two banks, four hotels, a chemist, a saddler, ... and a school. In the 1890s, this region was the center of the Great Shearers Strikes which pitted the unionized shearers against the station owners. The strikes failed but they provided the impetus for the founding of the Australian Labor Party.

In 1895, Winton’s Gregory Hotel hosted the first public performance of “Waltzing Matilda”, Australia’s unofficial national anthem. That year, the poet, journalist, and solicitor Banjo Paterson visited the Dagworth Station (northwest of Winton) and wrote the lyrics for the song. The previous year, shearers at the station were on strike and set fire to the woolshed. The owner of the Dagworth Station and three policemen gave chase and caught their target. Rather than be captured, the man shot and killed himself at 4 Mile Creek south of Kynuna. The song tells the allegorical story of a swagman (an itinerant worker) waltzing matilda (walking with his backpack), setting up a bush camp and grabbing a jumbuck (sheep) to eat. He is then caught by a squatter (the station owner) and three troopers. The swagman declares he will not be captured alive and drowns himself in the nearby billabong. His ghost haunts the site to this day.

After Winton, we fly 120nm over a broad plain with meandering rivers, dry most of the year but flooding periodically. We land in the Goldfields region at Trepell Airport [YTEE]. This is the Cannington Sliver and Lead Mine [CM] working a relatively new discovery (found via aerial survey). As of 2010, this was the largest silver and lead mine in the world. The site has a small village for service staff while most mine workers are fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) from Townsville. Then on to The Monument [YTMO] and the Phosphate Hill Mine [PHM]. The mine extracts phosphate and manufactures on site ammonium phosphate fertilizers to serve the Australian market. It is also a FIFO operation.

Next is Devoncourt Station [YDEV], a large and successful cattle operation with a carrying capacity of 12,000. It is the head office of the McDonald family – who have been working rural Australia since 1827. Beyond the usual complement of staff, this is also a base for two of the organization’s four full time helicopter pilots – the state of the art for mustering herds in contemporary Queensland. While helicopter work can be thrilling and dangerous, it can also be managed safely with care and experience.

We travel to the famous Outback town Cloncurry [YCCY]. On the way in, we pass over the Great Australian Mine [GAM], discovered in 1867 and in operation since 1920 as a fairly successful copper/gold mine. Cloncurry has supported other mines in the region, including the once very productive but now abandoned Mary Kathleen uranium mine some 30 miles west of the town. Cloncurry is equally famous as a commercial center for cattle stations in the broader Western Queensland region. Cattle have long been a way of life here and, while things have improved over the years, it remains a tough and precarious existence. The climate produces long stretches of drought and then brief bursts of disastrous flooding. Leading a successful life here requires everyday courage, cooperation with others, and long-term resilience.

From 1915, Cloncurry was the regional headquarters of the Australian Inland Mission of the Presbyterian church. Inspired by national hero John Flynn, who recognized the human costs of rural isolation, the organization started up the Royal Flying Doctor Service here in 1928. (They hired a DH.50 biplane from the local air service Qantas.) Nowadays, the RFDS has hub airports all around the country (including Longreach and Mount Isa), it flies to the moon-and-back 34 times each year, and helps a patient about once every two minutes. An RFDS museum is located in the town.

Coolullah Station [YCLH] lies 55nm northwest of Cloncurry. Like so many cattle stations, the homestead and station buildings are built near water, in this case on land adjacent to the Leichhardt River. The accompanying vegetation, including the shady gum trees, make for a more comfortable working and living environment. The station with 13,000 head is only one part of the greater North Australian Pastoral Company (NAPCO), one of the largest of Australian cattle companies with a head of 200,000 cattle today. (For more, see an interview here and a photo essay here.)

Heading southwest, we pass over the historic Mt Cuthbert Mine [MCM]. This early 20^th century copper mine, and its smelter, brought the Townsville railroad to the region and established it as a center for copper, silver, and gold. The mine ran its course and was abandoned in the late 1920s. We continue southwest to land at Lake Julius [YMOK]. This is an artificial lake built during the 1970s as a backstop water reservoir for Mt Isa.

Our final destination is Mount Isa itself. The focus of the town is the enormous Mount Isa Mine [MIM] famous for its lead, zinc and copper. In its early years (1924-1945) the mine struggled to pay for its substantial investment. After the war, with further discoveries and an expansion in operations, alongside increasing world demand, the Mount Isa Mine became a success. With massive processing capacities for lead, zinc and especially copper, the operation became one of history’s most productive single mines and established itself on the world stage.  (See here for a 1960s documentary.) Since that time, the company has added a number of regional copper/zinc/lead mines to its holdings and it was eventually incorporated into the Swiss-British giant Glencore International, richest mining company in the world.

The town of Mount Isa grew up with the mine. In the early post-war years, when the mine blossomed, it attracted a large number of European immigrants as workers – making Mount Isa an unusually cosmopolitan mix of Italians, Germans, and East Europeans. The population grew to about 15,000 in the 1960s and is now about 18,000. The town has a hospital, fifteen primary and secondary schools, a public library, a cinema complex, an events center, a rodeo ground, and a racecourse. It is home to the “School of the Air”, an Australian way of schooling isolated students in the sparsely-populated outback. A quick aerial circuit will give a good view of the massive mine and its operations on the west and the town on the east. We finish our journey at the Mount Isa Airport [YBMA] which handles regular airline traffic as well as general aviation. Importantly, it hosts one of the two Royal Flying Doctor Service bases in northwest Queensland. A good spot to end our journey.

Documentation
The flightplan can be found here. The gfp version has been tweaked for the TDS GTN database limitations.

Aircraft
Our flight today illustrates the extent to which Australia is subject to “the tyranny of distance.” You probably want an aircraft capable of a “fast cruse” of 220kts. Popular options might include the Daher TBM, Pilatus PC12, and Beech King Air. I shall fly the Black Square Analog King Air in the RFDS Queensland livery by IMS. (For the Black Square King Air, my conversion of the IMS livery is here. For the default Asobo King Air, the original livery by IMS is here.) As ever, fly what you like.

Additional Scenery
All the airports are in the default simulator. I do recommend a few addon airport models to brighten the otherwise pretty barren landscape.

Recommended:
Winton [YWTN]. kliff0rd.
Mount Isa [YBMA], Cloncurry [YCCY], The Monument Phosphate Hill [YTMO], Trepell [YTEE]. Shanman.

Thanks to these fine authors for their talent and efforts.

Temporarily, you can download a package that includes all the sceneries here. (84mb)

Time and Weather
For takeoff on Saturday, set the simulator at 8:00 am local for November 19, 2022.
We typically prefer real weather.

Multiplayer Particulars
Date and time: Saturday, November 19, 2022. 1900 UTC
Where: AVSIM RTWR Teamspeak - Casual Flights Channel
Teamspeak Server Address: ts.teamavsim.com
Microsoft Flight Simulator Multiplayer: United States East server.

If you want to help others enjoy the multiplayer experience, don't forget to enter your aircraft details on the multiplayer spreadsheet (linked here). Your courtesy will save others a lot of time and effort. Thanks!