The first time somebody offered me a flight in a Tiger Moth, I didn't get to go.
I was a kid, it was around 1980, and I've never quite forgotten it.
Looking back now, it's funny how often the Tiger Moth has appeared at different points in my life. I certainly never set out with a plan to fly one professionally, let alone own a Tiger Moth joy flight business.
The road that eventually brought me here was a very long one.
The Tiger Moth Flight That Got Away
My first encounter with a Tiger Moth was at Southport airfield in Queensland.
My great uncle was a pilot and had his own aircraft based there. During one visit he took me out to the airport, where we met a gentleman named Bruce McGarvie, who ran a flying operation at Southport and knew my great uncle.
We ended up talking for quite a while, and sitting there was a Tiger Moth, VH-WAP.
It was the first Tiger Moth I'd ever seen in person.
At some point Bruce offered to take me for a flight in it.
Naturally, I wanted to go.
Unfortunately, my great uncle decided we didn't have enough time.
So we left.
I never forgave him for that.
It would be many years before I finally got my Tiger Moth flight, but I certainly hadn't forgotten about the aeroplane.
Learning to Fly
Flying had been part of my life from a very young age.
Dad would hire Cessna 172s from Kyneton Aero Club and take my older sister and me flying. One of my earliest memories, from when I was about two, is sitting in the back of a 172 trying to work out how to get out of it.
Dad also had a habit of making those flights rather memorable.
He'd practise aggressive stall recoveries and pretend we'd had an engine failure. I loved being in the air, but I hated being frightened, and as a small child those demonstrations scared me half to death.
It wasn't until I was seven, when I travelled to Canberra on an airliner, that something clicked.
That was when I decided flying was what I wanted to do.
In 1987, I finally started taking flying lessons at Kyneton Aero Club in the club's 1976 Cessna 172, VH-ABW—an aircraft Dad had also flown.
I went solo after around eight hours of flight training.
By the time I'd finished high school, I'd accumulated about 30 hours in the air.
And sharing the hangar with VH-ABW at Kyneton was a Tiger Moth.
By then, of course, I already knew what a Tiger Moth was. I'd seen VH-WAP at Southport years earlier, and the Tiger Moth happened to be Dad's favourite aircraft.
But the one at Kyneton was simply part of the scenery. My attention was firmly on the Cessna 172 and learning how to fly.
I certainly didn't look across the hangar and imagine that one day I'd make my living flying one.
Chasing a Commercial Licence
While I was still at high school, I attended a seminar held by the Civil Aviation Training Academy, or CATA.
That eventually took me to Cessnock to begin training towards my Commercial Pilot Licence.
After about six weeks of ground school, we were sent to Deniliquin to begin the flying component of the course. There I flew Cessna 150s and 152s and Piper Warriors.
Once I'd been assessed at what was then known as Unrestricted PPL standard, I returned to Cessnock to enter the commercial phase of the course.
I continued flying the Warrior and gained my multi-engine endorsement on the Grumman Cougar, eventually accumulating around 40 hours on the twin.
Then things stopped going according to plan.
I failed my CPL flight test three times.
Eventually, I accepted my Private Pilot Licence and left CATA without the commercial licence I'd gone there to achieve.
It was a significant setback, but it didn't mean I'd given up on becoming a commercial pilot.
Between about 1990 and 1995, I continued flying, mostly taking friends and family on trips around Port Phillip Bay. During those years I also kept trying to finish my CPL.
The problem was fairly simple.
I kept running out of money.
Finally, a Tiger Moth Flight
It was during the mid-1990s that the Tiger Moth came back into my life.
Dad had always loved the Tiger Moth—it was his favourite aircraft—so for his birthday I decided to buy him a Tiger Moth flight out of Moorabbin.
I gave him his present one evening.
Then Dad handed me my birthday present.
He'd bought me a Tiger Moth flight.
Neither of us had known what the other was planning.
We arranged to do our flights on the same day from Moorabbin, and for the first time I finally found myself sitting in the cockpit of the aircraft I'd first seen as a kid at Southport.
That day was also the first time I ever had my hands on the controls of a Tiger Moth.
At the time, it was simply a memorable experience Dad and I shared.
Neither of us could possibly have known where it would eventually lead.
Twelve Years Away
Not long afterwards, life took me away from aviation.
My then-wife didn't like flying in light aircraft, and I reluctantly stopped flying.
What I probably thought would be a break became roughly 12 years away from the cockpit.
In 2007, I finally started flying again.
Recreational Aviation was growing in Australia at the time, and I decided that would be my route back into the air. Between 2007 and 2008, I flew around eight hours in the Jabiru J-160.
Then life intervened again.
Our family moved across the country to Perth, and flying went back on hold.
My marriage ended in 2009, and about 18 months later I returned to Melbourne with my children.
Then, in 2011, I received a large tax return.
There wasn't much doubt about what I was going to do with it.
I went flying.
Back in the Air
I regained my currency at the Royal Victorian Aero Club.
And my first passengers once I was current again were my children.
There was something special about that.
Some of my earliest memories were of Dad taking my sister and me flying from Kyneton. Now I was the dad taking his own children flying.
Around that time, a friend involved with Melbourne Aviation—which ultimately became Soar Aviation—suggested I obtain my Recreational Instructor Rating.
So once again I found myself flying the Jabiru J-160, but this time I was learning how to teach other people to fly.
After gaining the rating, I began working as an instructor two days a week while continuing to work four days a week as a contract draftsman.
For the first time, flying was becoming part of my working life.
Unfinished Business
In 2014, I decided I was ready to try again for the licence I'd first pursued more than two decades earlier.
The CPL.
This time, I passed the flight test.
After all those years, the unfinished business from CATA was finally finished.
The following year I left Soar Aviation to pursue a General Aviation instructor rating.
As part of that process, I completed spin training in a Super Decathlon.
Two weeks later, everything changed.
I suffered a basal ganglia haemorrhage.
I wasn't permitted to fly at all for the first year. For approximately four years after that, I was able to fly, but I wasn't permitted to fly solo.
Once again, aviation had thrown up a fairly substantial roadblock.
But rather than stop learning, I concentrated on the flying I was able to do.
During that period I gained my tailwheel endorsement, my aerobatics rating and my instrument rating.
Night Freight and Another Closed Door
In 2018/19, another opportunity appeared.
I began flying In Command Under Supervision—ICUS—on night freight runs between Moorabbin and Devonport.
It was very different from the flying I'd done previously and looked like another possible direction for my aviation career.
Then 2020 arrived.
COVID brought the ICUS program to an end.
Once again, a door closed.
But another one eventually opened.
In 2021, I started instructing at Lilydale Flying School.
By then my aviation journey had taken me through Cessnas, Pipers, Jabirus, the Grumman Cougar, aerobatic aircraft, instrument flying, instructing and night freight operations.
And then, in early 2023, the Tiger Moth came back into the story.
An Opportunity I Never Expected
Dad had passed away, and I received an inheritance from his estate.
Around the same time, I heard that Tiger Moth Joy Flights Yarra Valley was for sale.
So I bought it.
It sounds remarkably simple when written like that.
In reality, it was the culmination of a flying journey that had begun decades earlier and had taken more twists and turns than I could ever have imagined.
And of all the aircraft I could have ended up flying, there was something particularly meaningful about it being a Tiger Moth.
It was Dad's favourite aeroplane.
Coming Full Circle
Looking back, my aviation career bears very little resemblance to the one I imagined when I headed off to Cessnock as a teenager.
There were failed flight tests.
There were years when I couldn't afford to finish my training.
There were around 12 years when I didn't fly at all.
There were medical restrictions.
And just as another professional flying opportunity appeared, COVID closed that door too.
But somehow, flying kept finding its way back into my life.
And so did the Tiger Moth.
I first saw one as a child at Southport, when Bruce McGarvie offered me a flight in VH-WAP that I never got to take.
Another shared the hangar at Kyneton while I learned to fly in VH-ABW.
Years later, Dad and I unknowingly bought each other Tiger Moth flights for our birthdays. We flew from Moorabbin on the same day, and I finally got my first opportunity to put my hands on the controls of one.
Then, nearly three decades later, an inheritance from Dad helped make it possible for me to buy Tiger Moth Joy Flights Yarra Valley.
Today, I get to climb into VH-DHR at Lilydale and introduce other people to an aeroplane that has been quietly appearing in the background of my life for more than 40 years.
For some of my passengers, it's their first flight in an open-cockpit aircraft.
For some, it's something they've wanted to do for years.
And for many, just as it was for Dad and me all those years ago, it's a birthday present.
There's only one thing I wish had been different.
For all the flying I've done, I never got the opportunity to take Dad flying with me.
One day, though, we will make that flight.
When the time is right, I'll take Dad's ashes up in VH-DHR and scatter them from the Tiger Moth.
It seems the right aeroplane for our final flight together.