Australian_Geographic_-_October_2015_

YOU R AG

122 Australian Geographic

Flight of fancy

sacred kingfi sher

by Brodie James

This pair of juvenile

sacred kingfi shers in

Queensland had only

just left the nest a few

hours before landing

here. Both birds could

only fl y very slowly

and would tire quickly

at the time the photo-

graph was taken.

YOU R

PHOTOS

ANTARCTIC CR ASH
I recently subscribed to AUSTRALIAN
GEOGRAPHIC after reading old issues
loaned to me. I have particularly
appreciated your stories on the
Antarctic and Macquarie Island, as I
wintered at Davis in 1971 as a medical
officer, and then went on to winter at
Macquarie in 1972 (I was one of few
Australians to do consecutive winters
without returning to Australia). After
retirement, in 2012 I joined a group
run by adventure travel company
White Desert, with the hope of getting
to the South Pole via Russia’s
Novolazarevskaya (Novo) Station
Airport, located on the Antarctic

mainland, directly south of Cape Town.

Weather conditions ruled out flights

to the Pole in the DC-3s in which we

were to travel, so a consolation flight to

Holtanna Peak, south-west of the

airport, was organised. After a magnifi-

cent day with perfect weather and

amazing scenery, our DC-3 taxied to

return to Novo base. Unfortunately,

take-off did not go as planned – appar-

ently, in part, because the chosen path

was slightly uphill. With a lot of noise

and rumbling, but no sensation of

flight, I tightened my seatbelt. The

aircraft hit some raised ice and was

flung into the air without sufficient

speed to maintain flight. The nose hit

first and then skewed around, with the

impact leaving the nose bashed in and

the landing gear/skis and propellers

wiped off. There were only minor

injuries. Six Iridium satellite phones

were on hand to relay the news back

to base. A companion DC-3 was flown

across, and, after a delay for cloudy

skies, we flew back to Novo. I thought

your readers might be interested to

see a picture (below left)!

DR ROBBIN WATERHOUSE, TOWNSVILLE, QLD

In Trekking the tropics (AG 125), a

photograph of Margaret and Arthur

Thorsborne was wrongly captioned

as being taken in 1992. The image

was captured in 1990.

In Ask An Expert (AG 126), the image

of an erupting volcano was

incorrectly labelled as Big Ben, a

volcano on Heard Island. The image is

of Mt Etna, on the east coast of Sicily.

In Dreaming of an island sea (AG 126),

the Dig Tree is incorrectly noted as

being located at Thargominda. The

Dig Tree is east of Innamincka near

Nappa Merrie station in Queensland.

POSTSCRIPT

KINGFISHER:

Todiramphus sanctus