A life in the sky
Meet Bert Smithwell. Bert is 90
years old and, when we meet him,
he’s in the middle of an adventure.
He’s flying solo around Australia.
After last year losing his life-
long companion Lynne, his wife
of 66 years, Bert was left with an
enormous hole in his life. It was his
son, Ken, who saw the need for him
to get active. He reminded his father
how much he’d always loved to fly
and suggested that he give it another
go. Bert had flown with the air
force during the war and then given
Qantas 30 of his best years. But it
had been a long time.
Taking the initiative, Ken, a
Qantas pilot himself, decided to
book him some flying lessons.
“Ken has a Jabiru and an RV10.
And so I did some training in the
Jab,” says Bert. “But I was having
some trouble getting into and out
of the Jab; getting my legs back far
enough to get in wasn’t easy.” So Ken
fossicked around and he happened
to be at Cowra when Phil Goard,
who designed the Brumby aircraft,
was there. When Phil asked Bert
whether he’d like to have a look at
one, things got moving.
“So they took me down to see one
at the aero club at Cowra,” says Bert.
“Opening the hangar door, Phil said
they’d wheel it out and see if I could
get in it.’ And with the space that the
gull-wing doors afforded, I found that
I could get in and out of it quite easily.
“So Phil said: ‘Let’s just see if the
harness fits you.’ He did that, andthen shut the door and, like it had
only just occurred to him, said ‘Hey
would you like to go for a fly?’ So I
said ‘Yep, I would as a matter of fact.’
So he jumped in beside me, strapped
himself in and then just looked at me
and said: ‘Well ... go!’”A flight to
remember
With this re-telling of the story to
me, sitting in the shade outside his
little two-man tent at Cape Leveque,
Bert is laughing out loud now. “Well,
the aeroplane is simplicity itself to
operate. You’re hard pressed to find a
switch to turn on! So away we went.
My first take-off was OK but when
I got in the air, my over-controlling
was terrible. It was interestingbecause my mind went back to the
first flying instructor I ever had in
the air force, a wonderful man, and
I can still remember his patter: ‘A
wee bit bank and a wee bit rudder,
laddie.’ So the penny dropped and
with those words in my mind, things
soon smoothed out.
“Phil demonstrated for me what
the aeroplane can do. It’s got some
phenomenal capabilities; it’d be
almost impossible to stall it. It just
doesn’t want to fall out of the sky. So
after a while, he asked me to take us
back to the aerodrome and he’d see
how I go. I told him he’d better keep
a close eye on things!
“It was a bit rough, but we came
in on the approach, at which point
Phil asked for a bit more power, so I
did that, and next minute I’d flaredaustralianflying.com.au 21
January - February 2015 AUSTRALIAN FLYING