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June 27th: Mt. Beauty to Canberra
Near Albury The weather was not good and we were much in doubt whether we should leave or stay another day. Since we didn't have much faith in the weather man any more, we did not have the faintest idea if tomorrow would be better or worse. In the end we decided to go half the way to Sydney and do the remainder the day after. So we made a stop-over in Canberra, the capital of Australia.

The visibility was very poor in the patches of rain we experienced. Flying at 4500 feet we knew there would be at least 1000 feet between us and the highest points on our route. The rain intervals were only short so we never felt unsafe!

BAD visibility in rain The pilot concentrated to avoid the rain Rain ahead

We didn't get clearance to land right away and were asked to hold - first time ever by the way - so we circled Black Mountain for about 10 minutes before we landed on runway 35. Arriving in Canberra, Klaus spend an hour on the phone (yes, we would have been better of with Telstra's $150 plan :-) to find the phone number of Gareth Loy, a friend living in Canberra. Finally, after about 15 calls all over the country, Klaus got hold of him. Gareth was very surprised, especially over the fact that we are flying around in a small aircraft by ourselves (he didn't believe us to begin with). Even though the VERY short notice, Gareth did not hesitate to invite us to stay at his place. We had a nice evening with pizzas, pictures and a hilarious French comedy (The Dinner Game) on video.