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Hot Air Ballooning in Australia - Australia
by Gustasp Irani | Date >
2004-12-29 | Country : Australia | City : Cairns
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| COME FLY WITH ME
We were the lucky ones: the friendly fickle wind stole an extra 10 minutes of flying time when it blew our hot air balloon away from the clearing for which we were headed. Johan, our pilot, had no other option but to fire it up again into the clear morning skies above the coastal city of Cairns in northeast Australia. When finally we touched down, the landing was perfect and gentle, in the middle of a rust-gold field stacked with recently harvested bales of grass.
I could not have asked for a more dramatic finale to a most spectacular hot air ballooning adventure in Australia that started at the unearthly hour of 4.30 am. Under cover of darkness we were driven from our hotel to a little clearing beyond the outskirts of Cairns where balloons were being inflated with the help of enormous fans. Controlled blasts of hot air from gas burners forced them to rise up into the sky. This was the signal for us to climb into the basket which was divided into four passenger compartments; the fifth one was for Johan who manned the gas burners from the central slot.
The pre-flight instructions were brief: no smoking. We were then made to practice brace positions for landing: a semi-squatting stance with backs pressed against the wall of the basket. Satisfied with our clumsy effort, Johan fired a series of short bursts of hot air into the enormous textile dome above us. And we had lift off; it was the smoothest ascent imaginable as slowly, ever so slowly, we started to rise. Below us another hot air balloon was preparing to take off and with each blast of the burner, it lit up like a spectacular flaming torch flaring out of the earth shrouded in predawn shadows.
Gently we floated up into a sky washed by the flaming colours of the rising sun. And as the sun peered over the scattering of clouds loitering around the horizon, golden shafts streaked across the sky and exploded in bursts of light against the balloon hovering around us.
Soon the veil of mist below us slowly started to lift, revealing a landscape painted with farmlands, sugarcane fields, lush rainforests and homesteads. A flocks of lily-white birds, flying in formation, swept across the tapestry dotted with colourful balloons.
We drifted through this ever-changing canvas, mesmerized by its brilliant hues. The image of two balloons hovering above us in a clear blue sky and two more emerging from the translucent white shroud of mist below us is frozen in eternal memory. Suddenly a shaft of sunlight cast a sharp shadow of our balloon on a low-lying cloud and enveloped it with a ring of rainbow colours.
According to Johan hot air balloons have the right of way in the sky and this is because they are at the mercy of whimsical winds. The only way a pilot can navigate is by taking them up or down to catch the wind currents in the different strata of the atmosphere and pivot the passenger basket around on its axis.
All too soon we started to make our final descent; our time in the sky was almost over. Then thanks to a sudden change of wind we got another 10 minutes in the air. When finally we landed, we had covered 5 km, reached a maximum speed of 25 kph and soared up to a height of 3,700 ft above sea level.
Quickly we switched places in the basket with people taking the second half of the flight and watched as they lifted off on their flight of pure fantasy. Back on the ground we followed their flight across the sky in a van. When they finally it floated down to earth again we all pitched together and helped roll up the balloon and load it, along with the basket, on to the trailer.
Once this demanding yet fun-filled task that required a lot of teamwork was accomplished, we drove down to Tjapukai, an aborigine theatre just outside Cairns, for a lavish champagne breakfast. We however stayed off the bubbly; the hot air balloon flight was genuine vintage stuff that took us soaring, both body and spirit, to new and ecstatic heights.
Fact File
The hot air ballooning adventure is an option offered on the Cairns Adventure – Australian Holiday Package offered by Traveljini.com, India’s leading travel online portal. The Cairns Adventure Holiday Packages is a fun filled vacation to one of Australia’s top tourist destinations. In addition to its idyllic beaches and compelling rainforests, Cairns is a popular gateway to the Great Barrier Reef.
For more information log into the Traveljini website at www.traveljini.com
Gustasp Irani
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