Broken Hill

Broken Hill
For Saturday, December 21, 2024
Michael MacKuen

Today we fly to one of the legendary towns of Australia’s Outback. We start in the busy Melbourne area and travel north into the irrigated agricultural Murray River basin and finally head farther northward into the arid inland and the historically important mining town Broken Hill.


Royal Flying Doctor Service, Broken Hill

We begin at Moorabbin [YMMB], Melbourne’s large General Aviation facility ten miles south of the Central Business District. We head north, passing the world famous Royal Melbourne Golf Club, over St. Kilda (a near suburb beach community), and up to the Docklands to circle the high rise Central Business District. On the north side we pass Marvel Stadium (home to many Australian Football League fixtures), the expansive Queen Victoria Market (clip), and the Royal Exhibition Building. Then we bend back south and then west turning at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds. The enormous stadium hosts major cricket events including the annual Boxing Day test match against a visiting international side (this year is India). It is also the venue of regular-season Australian Football League matches and the season’s Premiership finale. (Sample the 2023 thriller.) (The AFL has become a national phenomenon but half the teams are from the various historic suburbs of Melbourne. Locals take these loyalties very seriously.)

We proceed along the Yarra River to see modern Melbourne’s tall towers and, down below, Flinders Street Station (the old railway station). While the number and height of these skyscrapers is impressive, life on the ground retains the feel of the “Victorian” city that Melbourne was a half-century ago. After a moment, we get a look at the high and long Bolte Bridge (1990s) and the modern docks of the Port of Melbourne (now mostly a container port).

We turn north over the Flemington Racecourse, home to weekly race days as well as each year’s headline events. (The track, with its grandstand, was also the “finish line” for the famous 1934 MacRobertson Air Race from London to Melbourne.) We land at Essendon Fields [YMEN] which is the city’s oldest airfield and once its international airport. It is now a busy GA facility for business jets, flight schools, helicopter operations, and charter commercial services – as well as major maintenance facilities. Hanger 85 hosts the Melbourne base for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. (Essendon Fields is also the site of the Orbx world headquarters.)

Leaving Melbourne, we head northwest over Victoria’s farmland to Bendigo [YBDG]. With the 1851 gold discovery in the Victorian goldfields, Bendigo became one of Australia’s gold rush boom towns and its wealth remains on display in the city’s architecture. (While some goldmining remains, Bendigo is more of a large regional center nowadays – the fourth largest of Australia’s inland cities.) Turning northeast, we fly to Echuca [YECH] and the Murray River. The continent’s longest river flows 1,500 nm from the Snowy Mountains in the east through the dry agricultural country of Victoria and New South Wales into the ocean at the South Australia coast in the west. In the nineteenth century, Echuca became a major inland port for agriculturalists along the river because it represented the closest port to the capital city of Melbourne. Paddle wheel steamers plied the shallow waters transporting goods to the urban center and equipment and supplies back to the hinterland. In the 20^th century, of course, the newly built railroads supplanted the slower and less dependable river transport. (Echuca continues to host paddle wheel steamers, now as a tourist attraction.)

We then follow the Murray River westward to visit briefly the small river towns of Swan Hill [YSWH] and Robinvale [YROI] and then land at the important regional center  Mildura [YMIA]. In the 1880s the Victoria government promoted the idea of irrigated croplands (as in California) and recruited experienced American investors who located their project at Mildura. With demonstrated success (using steam-driven power to irrigate fields), the idea spread throughout the area. In 1915 the governments of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia agreed to build locks and weirs and reservoirs along the Murray River to manage the water supply and attempt to buffer the floods and droughts that threaten farmlands. The sunny and well-irrigated region from Echuca to the South Australia border has become “Victoria’s Food Bowl” (nicknamed Sunraysia) producing substantial portions of Australia’s rice, dairy, citrus fruits (especially oranges), grapes and wine. The total is about 40 percent of the nation’s agricultural produce. The great economic success of the region – with the natural water supply being diverted to croplands – has brought environmental challenges which are beginning to be addressed.

We depart northward, more-or-less along the Darling River Basin, a major tributary of the Murray. The area becomes more arid. We descend for a touch-and-go at Menindee [YMED], a bare dirt strip servicing the small local town. The Menindee Lakes have been built up as reservoirs that manage the flow of the Darling (which drains southern Queensland and western New South Wales) and provide a water source for local residents.

Broken Hill is an almost legendary city in Australian popular culture. It was here that in 1883 Charles Rasp, a local sheep station rider, discovered the main silver-lead-zinc deposits that changed everything. Rasp and local investors established a claim in the name of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company (BHP), now one of the world’s largest natural resource companies. They mined the rich core deposits, locally named the Lode Line, with great success. Although BHP left Broken Hill in 1939 to make its way elsewhere, the remaining mines prospered as a main economic engine for Australia until the 1990s and several operations continue today.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the miners’ union organization and industrial action spearheaded the national movement toward unionization and socialism. After two major strikes failed in 1892 and 1909 (in a familiar story BHP hired substitute workers and employed police to maintain the peace), the unions eventually won success for a meaningful contract in post-war 1919-1920. These difficult labor union battles, along with similar events in the maritime and the sheep-shearing industries, led to the formation of a political alternative in the Australian Labor Party (ALP).

This is a desert city with few natural resources. Electric power was introduced by the mines in the 1920s by means of steam-powered and later diesel-powered generators. Sixty years later the town was connected to the national grid. Perhaps more distressing, Broken Hill has never had a real water supply. The first 75 years made do with rail-shipped water tanks. In the 1950s, the town added a permanent pipeline connecting with the Menindee Lakes on the Darling River. However, due to seasonal uncertainties with the Darling, the town has since built a longer pipeline to Wentworth on the Murray River with four pumping stations along the way.

We continue to our final destination, the airport at Broken Hill [YBHI]. Before landing, we might circle over the town to see the Lode Line and the enormous pits that give evidence to the mining operations’ success. The airport hosts the Royal Flying Doctor Service South Eastern Section base located at the western end of the flightline facilities (Parking 8 and Parking 9 on your map). Historically, this has been the most important inland center for the RFDS. And in the public imagination, Broken Hill has been the “Capital of the Outback.”

Documentation
The flightplan can be found here.

Aircraft
This is a flight of 480nm with 7 landings. It requires a fairly speedy GA aircraft that can “fast cruise” at about 230-240kts. Popular choices might include the TBM 850/930, the PC-12, and the King Air 350i. The terrific Cessna 414AW and Beech Duke will work, perhaps with an occasional dose of “hyper-drive”. Please fly what you like.

Additional Scenery
All of the airports are in the default simulator. That said, these addons will enhance the scenery. Thanks to these talented addon creators.

Moorabbin [YMMB]. DanR86.
    (Or much larger download Moorabin [YMMB]. SkyCraft_Studios)
Essenden Fields [YMEN]. Redbaron601
Bendigo [YBDG]. Redbaron601
Echuca [YECH] in Victoria NSW Australia Murray River Area. colinj
Swan Hill [YSWH] in Victoria Mid Western 17 airport pack. colinj
Robinvale [YROI] in Victoria NSW Australia Murray River Area. colinj
Mildura [YMIA]. Redbaron601
Broken Hill [YBHI]. Mountainair

In addition, you do want this library (you might have installed it already) MSFS 2020 object library with 200+ models, by Colinj. (Also, if you have it, be sure that the “Australia Salt Lakes Fix” by gunther is not enabled.)

Temporarily, you can obtain the freeware package here (8MB). (This includes only the required 3 Victorian Airports by colinj, rather than the two big packages listed at FlightSim.to.) Again, be sure you have the Colinj library listed above.

Orbx has payware packages for Melbourne City Landmarks (hand-crafted models of buildings are sharper than the default photogrammetry which is good on its own) and Essendon [YMEN] (nicely detailed but more than you need for our stop-and-go visit). If you have them, I’d recommend activating them. Orbx also hosts a payware Bendigo [YBDG] by Impulse Simulations.

Time and Weather
For takeoff on Saturday, set the simulator at 2:00pm local for December 21, 2024. We typically prefer real weather. (The forecast indicates pretty good weather with some brisk winds.)

Multiplayer Particulars
Date and time: Saturday, December 21, 2024. 1900 UTC
RTWR Multiplayer Discord Channel
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). Please be kind enough to enter the title exactly as it stands in the title=”xxx” line of the aircraft.cfg file. Your courtesy will save others a lot of time and effort. Thanks!