Of mice and men

John Alley (Rockhampton) and Maurie O'Connell (Queanbeyan) called in unexpectedly (to all of us) yesterday.

John had been down at Maurie's place primarily to preach at a seminar weekend. He'd flown his plane with the plan of taking Maurie to Bundaberg where Maurie has recently purchased a new plane of his own. It would take a book or two to fill in the background to that sentence!

So they took off from Canberra airport yesterday and encountered weather condition that were rapidly deteriorating as they headed north. They have had record rainfall in many parts of Queensland over the last few days, so this was not surprising. They landed at Narrabri and spent the night with us in the hope that the weather would improve.

This morning the weather was atrocious here, worse further north and appalling on the coast. John needed to get home in a hurry. They decided that flying back to Canberra and then John catching a commercial flight to Rocky was an expensive option. They hired a car to go one way to Rocky. The only problem with the plan was that they couldn't hire a car in Narrabri so I had to drive them to Moree- an hour and a bit each way.

I linked them up with their car, got a quick take away coffee at Macca's then got back to town in time to be not too late for the Ministers Fraternal meeting.

To sum up, John and Maurie are in Rockhameptin, John's plane is in Narrabri and Maurie's plane is in Bundaberg. To add to the logistical problems, Maurie is on a restricted licence which means he cannot fly in controlled air space and so his closest airport to home is Cooma- an hours and a half from Queanbeyan- which is where his car is waiting for him for when he flies hi