Cameron talked about mitigation here tonight
and the flight that I'm actually going to tell you about,
talk to you about,
is how I went through mitigation
to actually do the complete flight.
Now, I started with...
We talked about two bags,
one with experience that didn't have much in it.
But when I was... when I first started flying,
my dad had a 150,
so I put a few bits of experience in my bag straightaway with Dad.
Once again, flying training.
I had the luxury of having people with a lot of hours,
grade-one instructors, to start my instructing and to do my training.
Once again, from those guys I put a lot more experience in my bag.
And then I got my first job, up in the Pilbara.
Sort of, semi...I didn't count it in the wet season,
but that was semi wet season up there when I was up there.
So a little bit in my bag again about wet seasons.
And then the next time, got an instrument rating.
Couple more bits in my bag.
It was all good.
Headed up to Darwin in the mid-'90s.
Started flying up here, come into my first wet season.
I was lucky enough to get up here in...it was about Easter time.
So I had a whole year to get used to the aircraft I was flying,
ATC, and all the places I was going -
half of them, I couldn't pronounce their names, as you know.
So then I worked for a charter company out here,
got enough experience on Conquests and went back to the RFDS.
RFDS was a great training ground for me.
And then kept on - everything I did there with the chief pilot,
training captains, all the ICOS I did,
kept on filling my bag up, just kept on going and going and going.
So I did 10 and a half years being there.
Up here with Pearl.
When I was up here, that's when I started my checking training.
Once again, from all that experience, kept on putting stuff in my bag.
Came over to the police in 2009.
We had a guy doing our checking training,
Peter Tippett - you might know.
He's pretty well Mr Pilatus in the world.
Filled my bag up more.
So I was very lucky.
I had a good, constant stuff throwing in my bag for this.
So the flight that I was going to talk to you about
is mitigation - how I got through this flight.
It was in February 2011.
It was just after Cyclone Carlos.
It'd just been through about three, four days beforehand.
It was only a cyclone. There was only just the one.
And it started over the Daly River, back around to the west,
back over Darwin,
then it headed down the Kimberley and down the west coast of WA.
Left a fair bit of weather here.
Usually cyclones drain a fair bit of the weather away,
but it left a lot of weather here.
So I come out to work -
we actually evac'd the planes away down to Katherine on the Wednesday,
and we brought them back over the weekend.
One of the aircraft was US on the Monday.
We all rocked up to work. We had two flights going.
I got out, I did my plane, seven o'clock sign-on.
But the other plane was US.
So we actually had to use my plane first up. So that's OK. I'll wait.
So the other guy went out, flew out and come back again.
I was meant to be airborne again by about 11:30.
Obviously, like, things happened, things got pushed back,
took more time refuelling, and it wasn't until 12:30 I departed.
Now, this flight was going to be seven sectors in the afternoon.
So it was going from Darwin to Tindal,
Tindal to Numbulwar, Numbulwar to Lake Evella,
Elcho Island, Milingimbi, Maningrida, back to Darwin.
So that's a fairly big day and half of it's already almo...gone.
But I'd had rest, I was in at work,
and I looked at - "OK, this is going to be doable still."
So this is where I had to start to reach into my bag of mitigation.
Go through there. What's happening?
I've had good rest, yes? Had lunch.
I had a plane full of fuel, 'cause we could take full fuel on the NG,
and three people.
We're taking officers back 'cause they had been stuck in Darwin
because of the weather,
so we couldn't fly them to their normal parts.
They had people everywhere
and we're just delivering people back into communities,
our police members.
So it was fairly important to get these people back on the ground.
So, uneventful - we go down to Tindal,
pick up another three members, so it's six people on board now,
and we head out to Numbulwar.
When I was heading into Numbulwar -
most of this time we were in cloud, actually,
'cause of just the weather, it was just the wet season,
so we broke out of the cloud at about 10,000 feet.
Going into Numbulwar is not a problem, visual approach into there.
And when I was coming in to land,
on 1-5, towards the east,
there was a fairly big thunderstorm there, probably about 10 miles away.
We landed. Not much time to actually offload our passenger that was there.
There was only one getting off. Bit of gear.
And by this time the thunderstorm had pretty well developed
in a matter of five minutes to move close to us,
which was probably too close for us to actually take off then,
which I decided - I'll wait on the ground.
So I waited on the ground for an hour.
So, once again, pushed that time away.
So I'm biting into my day again.
After an hour, thunderstorm had run its course
and I headed up to Lake Evella.
25 minutes up there.
We could hear people going into Lake Evella.
It's all OK.
But on the plane radar, Stormscope,
there was a mass of a couple of thunderstorms to the north,
from the west around to the north,
and all around to the east at Lake Evella.
Not a problem.
There was VFR planes going in there
and it was virtually an isolated thunderstorm area there.
So I land.
We go, backtrack down the runway and that's fine, park up,
get out of the aircraft.
It starts raining.
The thunderstorms have moved from the north to us.
There was lightning down the south of us -
to the east, south, north, west, every which way you want to go.
So once again, mitigation. "What I'm going to do?"
I've got to work out, I've got still another four sectors to go.
It's not going to get back into town now, into Darwin,
until late in the evening.
So then my thinking was, "Well, I may as well close the plane,
"stop all the water running in it at this stage.
"Then I'll go down, have a cup of tea,
"wait for it to blow over."
Not knowing that time... there was probably going to be
a supercell thunderstorm stick around.
So what I did was had points of working out the mitigation
of when I'm actually going to take off -
the latest time that I'm going to Lake...
..from Lake Evella to Elcho and complete flying.
And that was starting to get there now.
It's starting to get to the 5:30 which I'd calculated.
Still raining. Still thunderstorms. Still lightning everywhere.
So I had to have a lot of plans.
Plans - I'm up to plan, like, C now.
But I'm not going to go over to Lake Evella.
Maybe I could go to Maningrida on the way home
if I leave a little bit later.
Once again, that came up.
That time, I went, "What am I going to do now?
"Oh, well. I'll wait till seven o'clock."
Seven o'clock was when I was going to go straight back to Darwin.
I had guys on board. I had still five people to deliver around.
They were needed in the police station. They were needed back there.
They'd been absent for a good week because of the cyclone.
So, once again,
talking about pressures that are put on us to go.
But there wasn't one there
because if it's coming to seven o'clock, I'm staying.
I'm staying at Lake Evella. I'm not going out.
I'm not lea...I'm not taking off.
Previously to that flight, three weeks beforehand,
our aircraft, our other aircraft, was struck by lightning.
So I'm very aware.
That plane's actually been struck by lightning three times now.
(LAUGHTER)
So it's a big, big cost, big time,
and sitting on the ground out at Lake Evella for...to get it fixed
would be a long time.
So we decided to stay. And we stayed the night.
We had our clothes what we flew in. The other guys were there too.
But we were all glad that we stayed that night,
'cause that thunderstorm didn't give up till 11 o'clock that night.
So it was overhead for a good five, six hours.
So next day, what did we do?
We got new weather.
And I continued on my flight that I did...had planned
from the day before.
Everything was fine.
I ended up getting back in at 12 o'clock the next day.
So I had looked at my mitigations, what I did,
so I made that decision each time I had a decision.
Everything was going south all the time, so I'd pull it back,
make the decision to go south, change my timings.
I was lucky - I had a lot of fuel
and I had people that were understanding
that it wasn't quite right to fly in that weather.
So that's my story.
(APPLAUSE)