WITH mustering by light aircraft becoming less popular, pilot Hugh Lord had to diversify his business to be able to keep it running.
Operating out of the Steve Radford Hangar at the Broken Hill Airport, H&A Air decided to look into other opportunities for their aviation business with the rise of helicopter mustering proving generally more efficient than by plane.
“I originally started out mustering,” Mr Lord said. “But then we sort of figured mustering by plane is a dying art.”
He now musters by helicopter himself, but to continue his light aircraft business he decided to offer tourism flights.
“There wasn’t much money to continue, other than training and a bit of mustering and low level flying, there wasn’t a lot of interest,” he said.
“So I thought, lets try a bit of tourism as well.
“And we were approved for charter operations in March of 2020.”
Unfortunately, the COVID pandemic had also begun impacting Australia at the same time.
“So we started right as COVID hit, and it was a difficult game for a while,” Mr Lord said.
While waiting to be able to offer tourism flights more consistently, he began flying the mail route for remote stations.
“So we go from Broken Hill up to the Queensland border and back every Tuesday,” he said.
“Which is 28 landings, and we drop their mail off.”
In the background, Mr Lord spent time and money investing in advertising his tourism operation.
“We spent quite a bit of time on advertising,” he said.
“I was getting stressed because we’d put so much money into advertising. We just needed the stars to align.”
And align they did, when rains sent water down from Queensland earlier this year, to begin filling Lake Eyre.
“We’d been doing the Lake Eyre trips maybe twice a month for the last two years,” Mr Lord said.
“But then it just went berserk.”
On average, Lake Eyre, usually a dry salt pan, fills completely only three time a century.
It’s expected Lake Eyre will be reach close to 90 per cent capacity this month, with depths up to 7 metres in some parts of the lake.
Mr Lord said bookings began flying in straight after the floods up north, and haven’t slowed since.
“When it rained up in Queensland, the moment people realised the rain is going to fill Lake Eyre, everyone wanted to go,” he said.
“So a lot of chatter and emails started to come in. Lake Eyre flights are now booked out for almost three months in advance.”
Mr Lord said though water has been in Lake Eyre in his lifetime, he hasn’t seen it himself before.
“Currently at Lake Eyre, the floor is almost full,” he said.
“I haven’t seen it before but it has happened in my life. But it’ll be the first time in a long time that Cooper Creek has gotten to Lake Eyre [if it reaches as predicted.]
“I was talking to an old bloke, he was about 90 odd, and he said that the Cooper has only made it to the lake three times in his lifetime.”
The flooding event on the lake is considered rare, as well as the most substantial filling of the lakes in at least 15 years — some suggest it’s the biggest since the 1970s.
With water expected to remain in the lake for potentially years to come, H&A Air plan to continue on offering flights to those looking for an adventure, and Mr Lord said no matter how many times he flies, he can’t see himself taking it for granted.
“I love it,” he said.“Every day is still different from anything you’ve done or seen before.”
