and was on the ground smooth as
you like. Well, Phil just threw his
hands in the air and yelled ‘You did
it!’ I don’t think I’ve ever seen an
instructor do that before.
Bert wasn’t sure how much of
the landing he really did do. “Were
you helping me?” Phil beamed back
at him and pronounced: “I didn’t
touch a thing!”Ticket to fly
So, with that, Bert decided to get
some formal instruction. This was
October 2013, aged 89. But he says
age is immaterial: “It’s how you
think and feel.”
Lyn Gray, CFI of Fly Oz at
Cowra, took a great interest in Bert
and recommended her colleague,
RAA instructor Jenny Ganderton, asthe best person to take him towards
his goal of safely flying a recreational
aircraft. “Jenny was excellent,”
remarks Bert. “I had told her that I
thought I might be too old, and she
just said: ‘Well let’s go and find out.’
She gave Bert over five hours of
good training and apparently put
some real heat on him in the last
hour-and-a-half. “She really churned
me over, and made it hard. It was a
very thorough test in the end. But she
finally said: ‘OK, take the aeroplane
and go and have a fly, Bert.’”A new beginning
Well, no-one knew quite how
literally he’d take that. At the top
of Bert’s bucket list was to fly a little
aeroplane around Australia. It had
been in the back of his mind for along time. So this was the start of
that dream. Every two weeks, Bert
would go up for a fly, just to keep his
hand in. In January 2014, he ordered
his own Brumby.
The delivery was delayed, so Phil
suggested he take the aero club
aircraft, which he half owns, and that
Bert trained on. “They assured me
they’d easily organise a substitute
aircraft for use by the club while I was
away, so I happily agreed to that.”
While Bert was working at
Qantas, he’d owned a Baron for 20
years which he used mainly to fly
between Bankstown and his farm
at Crookwell. “It was a wonderful
aeroplane for that, and I did take it
on a couple of trips up to the centre
of Australia, but I never did a big
trip in it,” he says.
His very first aeroplane was
actually a C152, for which he’d paid
the princely sum of $3000. “But it
was in perfect order. I always had
a yen to park it in front of the 747
during my Qantas years!” he laughs.
“When you’re instructing, as I was
doing with Qantas for the last 20
years, you don’t get many hours
flying. I’ve got thousands of hours
instructing in simulators but you
don’t get the hours up that a line
pilot gets. My son, for example, has
around 25,000 hours, and I wound
up with about 18,000.”Where the seeds
were sown
Bert’s flying career started when he
enlisted in the air force during the
war. He did elementary training
at Narrandera and service training
on Wirraways at Uranquinty, near
Wagga. Then, in what he describes
as the most amazing year in his
flying career, he towed aerial targets
in old Fairey Battles, the early single
engine English bombers. “Beautifully
designed, such a pretty aeroplane,”
muses Bert. “It had lots of things
about it, like the hydraulic system for
the undercarriage, which were just
miles ahead of its time. But at the end
of the day it was too slow as a bomber.
A whole battle squadron of them was
lost on one particular mission. They
had to attack some bridges, but the
aeroplane, mooching along at around
180-200 kt, was just too slow for air
work in a war. That squadron was
awarded the VC back in England.”
So he spent a year at the RAAF
base at Sale, flying backwards
and forwards along the east coast
of Victoria. Enjoying the flying
immensely and trying hard to perfect
every flight, he remembers this as the
happiest time he’s ever had in his life!
“There was an art in towing targets
well for the air gunners in the old
Avro Ansons to learn on,” he says. “If
you were sloppy, the drogue would
fly at varying levels and you needed
to put your heart and soul into the
job. My objective, every time, was to
get that thing sitting perfectly so that
the air gunner would have the best
chance of hitting it.”
After his 12-month posting at
Sale, he was sent to Mildura to
train on Kittyhawks, which he then
flew in the Pacific from Noemfoor,
Morotai and across to Borneo.
“Mainly dive bombing and strafing
at that time,” explains Bert. “That“ She really ch urned
meover and made it ha rd”
AUSTRALIAN FLYING January - February 201522 Destinations^ australianflying.com.au
LEFT: Astute and competent, it’s
no surprise Bert Smithwell takes a
solo around-Oz safari in his stride.
Stats: 10 weeks, 104 hours of flying,
lifetime of memories.
BOTTOM LEFT: Our Curtis Aviation
C182, VH-BMJ, rests in good
company while we recharge our
safari batteries for the second half
of our 18-day trip.