The Outback Air Race

The Canberra Times

A group of Canberrans are set to compete in the 2025 Outback Air Race, an aviation time trial spanning 3,881 kilometres across remote Australia. The race, running from August 22 to September 8, raises vital funds for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Video by Keegan Carroll

Transcript

00:00This year the route changes every race. This year we're starting at Ayres Rock and then flying to

00:13Ellis Springs, Tennant Creek, Daly Waters, Catherine, Kununurra, Broome, Onslow, Exmouth and

00:22finishing in Carnarvon. So there's nine legs in the race and on a number of the stops we have a day

00:31off so we can do tourist things, have a look around and stuff like that. So that's the route

00:37and we'll be away from Canberra for probably nearly three weeks because it'll take us three

00:43days to get to Ayres Rock and not sure how long it's going to take us to get back home from Carnarvon

00:48but probably a week or so. So there's a couple of ways that the race raises money. We personally

00:55raise money through a lot of guilt and intimidation tactics with all of our friends but the race itself

01:00has sponsors that sponsor legs of the race. So they make donations to the Royal Flying Doctors

01:07for the race itself but primarily it's through the donations that we get for participating in the

01:16race and we drive that through events that we've had. We've done a couple of Bunnings sausage sizzles,

01:23those types of things but largely just through collecting donations from the general public.

01:28The money that we do raise is used to buy the medical kits that are on the stations in the outback.

01:34So the RFDS puts large medical kits on to big stations in the outback and they are full of all

01:41the supplies that you would need in an emergency. But of course over time those things go out of date

01:46or they degrade and they need to be restocked. So a lot of the money that's raised on the race goes to

01:51that particular purpose to help to resupply those medicine chests. Last race we set out to raise half

01:58a million dollars and we raised $750,000. So this race our target is $750,000 and we're hoping to hit a

02:05million. So we're about five weeks away now and we hit around about $490,000 this week.

02:11So this is a 1974 Piper Cherokee cruiser. So it's a vintage machine but it has some beautiful avionics

02:20on board and so we've got all the neat kit to help us navigate around the place. And it's pretty slow

02:28but it's reasonably economical. It's a pretty straightforward aircraft so it doesn't require

02:34a lot of maintenance and when it does require maintenance it's generally simple tools will

02:40get you by to fix anything that goes wrong. And it might be a slow aircraft but it did win the last

02:45race because it's not about speed it's about the accuracy of your flying. So on each of the legs

02:52the average kind of length is about around about 200 and 200 to 250 nautical miles. Some of the legs

03:01are up around 400 nautical miles but most around the 200 to 250. So for us that's about around about

03:09two and a half hours flying for each of those each of those legs. Harry and I are both keen to raise funds

03:17for the Royal Flying Doctor Service but also for an adventure and we were combining two of our passions

03:24which are flying and also raising money for a really good cause so that was important to us both.

03:31Well since I'm not technically allowed to fly my responsibility would be navigating and

03:37oh yeah because it's a time trial so we have to go from point A to point B in a accuracy so you have to

03:43try to get as close to the top and as close to your nominated time and that'll be my job to tell dad

03:49like hey I think you're going too fast or hey I think we need to go heading blah blah. Well at school

03:55I did a presentation so we could get the word out and not many kids at my school can say oh I flew a

04:03plane today and most of the people coming up and asking questions like hey I think this is really

04:07cool hey what are you doing here and hey how does the race route go and I've yeah told them all about

04:12and everyone seems pretty interested. We're going to be flying a Piper Dakota it's got a slightly bigger

04:20than the standard Piper Warrior and has a slightly bigger engine so we have a little bit more

04:25flexibility in terms of range and um and also for us being able to go a little faster or a little

04:33slower if we need to. The areas around Broome I've always well it looks cool the west coast of

04:40WA I've never been to WA either and yeah the activities that are listed there also look pretty

04:47cool so that'll be my favourite part. We're actually going past one of the remote Aboriginal

04:52communities that I used to work at so Harry and I are going to go and say hello to the people there

04:57and I'm going to show him where I used to work and the people I used to work with. When I was posted

05:02down to Raface eSail in Victoria I started to see that there was quite a few RFDS

05:11road transport areas around and I started to like look into it a little bit more and understand

05:19that even three hours south of Melbourne was still somewhat remote for for people and it's actually

05:27really difficult to get good quality medical care even three hours south of Melbourne so

05:34um I started to look into it and then I saw that there was this this thing called the Outback Air Race

05:40um and as a pilot I was pretty interested straight away so I started to do a bit more digging into the

05:47the Outback Air Race and saw that it was coming up for 2025.

05:51um so that's how we got really interested in it um in about 2023. Steph will be the only pilot and

05:59I'll just be there kind of uh doing what I can I suppose around the edges there to make it as easy

06:04as possible for her for the long trip. I think um just being able to go on this adventure it is it is

06:13truly a once in a lifetime opportunity and a lot of people don't get to experience the Outback and

06:21you know of Australia by road let alone by air so to have that kind of experience and to be able

06:28to do it ourselves I think that's that's pretty amazing and then the other part is we get to meet

06:33these really cool people um that share a really common and experience together um and have the same

06:42interests so for me that's that's what I'm most passionate about. We're actually going to be flying

06:47a Piper Cherokee as well um 1973 so she's a little a year older.

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