00:00This year the route changes every race. This year we're starting at Ayres Rock and then flying to
00:13Ellis Springs, Tennant Creek, Daly Waters, Catherine, Kununurra, Broome, Onslow, Exmouth and
00:22finishing in Carnarvon. So there's nine legs in the race and on a number of the stops we have a day
00:31off so we can do tourist things, have a look around and stuff like that. So that's the route
00:37and we'll be away from Canberra for probably nearly three weeks because it'll take us three
00:43days to get to Ayres Rock and not sure how long it's going to take us to get back home from Carnarvon
00:48but probably a week or so. So there's a couple of ways that the race raises money. We personally
00:55raise money through a lot of guilt and intimidation tactics with all of our friends but the race itself
01:00has sponsors that sponsor legs of the race. So they make donations to the Royal Flying Doctors
01:07for the race itself but primarily it's through the donations that we get for participating in the
01:16race and we drive that through events that we've had. We've done a couple of Bunnings sausage sizzles,
01:23those types of things but largely just through collecting donations from the general public.
01:28The money that we do raise is used to buy the medical kits that are on the stations in the outback.
01:34So the RFDS puts large medical kits on to big stations in the outback and they are full of all
01:41the supplies that you would need in an emergency. But of course over time those things go out of date
01:46or they degrade and they need to be restocked. So a lot of the money that's raised on the race goes to
01:51that particular purpose to help to resupply those medicine chests. Last race we set out to raise half
01:58a million dollars and we raised $750,000. So this race our target is $750,000 and we're hoping to hit a
02:05million. So we're about five weeks away now and we hit around about $490,000 this week.
02:11So this is a 1974 Piper Cherokee cruiser. So it's a vintage machine but it has some beautiful avionics
02:20on board and so we've got all the neat kit to help us navigate around the place. And it's pretty slow
02:28but it's reasonably economical. It's a pretty straightforward aircraft so it doesn't require
02:34a lot of maintenance and when it does require maintenance it's generally simple tools will
02:40get you by to fix anything that goes wrong. And it might be a slow aircraft but it did win the last
02:45race because it's not about speed it's about the accuracy of your flying. So on each of the legs
02:52the average kind of length is about around about 200 and 200 to 250 nautical miles. Some of the legs
03:01are up around 400 nautical miles but most around the 200 to 250. So for us that's about around about
03:09two and a half hours flying for each of those each of those legs. Harry and I are both keen to raise funds
03:17for the Royal Flying Doctor Service but also for an adventure and we were combining two of our passions
03:24which are flying and also raising money for a really good cause so that was important to us both.
03:31Well since I'm not technically allowed to fly my responsibility would be navigating and
03:37oh yeah because it's a time trial so we have to go from point A to point B in a accuracy so you have to
03:43try to get as close to the top and as close to your nominated time and that'll be my job to tell dad
03:49like hey I think you're going too fast or hey I think we need to go heading blah blah. Well at school
03:55I did a presentation so we could get the word out and not many kids at my school can say oh I flew a
04:03plane today and most of the people coming up and asking questions like hey I think this is really
04:07cool hey what are you doing here and hey how does the race route go and I've yeah told them all about
04:12and everyone seems pretty interested. We're going to be flying a Piper Dakota it's got a slightly bigger
04:20than the standard Piper Warrior and has a slightly bigger engine so we have a little bit more
04:25flexibility in terms of range and um and also for us being able to go a little faster or a little
04:33slower if we need to. The areas around Broome I've always well it looks cool the west coast of
04:40WA I've never been to WA either and yeah the activities that are listed there also look pretty
04:47cool so that'll be my favourite part. We're actually going past one of the remote Aboriginal
04:52communities that I used to work at so Harry and I are going to go and say hello to the people there
04:57and I'm going to show him where I used to work and the people I used to work with. When I was posted
05:02down to Raface eSail in Victoria I started to see that there was quite a few RFDS
05:11road transport areas around and I started to like look into it a little bit more and understand
05:19that even three hours south of Melbourne was still somewhat remote for for people and it's actually
05:27really difficult to get good quality medical care even three hours south of Melbourne so
05:34um I started to look into it and then I saw that there was this this thing called the Outback Air Race
05:40um and as a pilot I was pretty interested straight away so I started to do a bit more digging into the
05:47the Outback Air Race and saw that it was coming up for 2025.
05:51um so that's how we got really interested in it um in about 2023. Steph will be the only pilot and
05:59I'll just be there kind of uh doing what I can I suppose around the edges there to make it as easy
06:04as possible for her for the long trip. I think um just being able to go on this adventure it is it is
06:13truly a once in a lifetime opportunity and a lot of people don't get to experience the Outback and
06:21you know of Australia by road let alone by air so to have that kind of experience and to be able
06:28to do it ourselves I think that's that's pretty amazing and then the other part is we get to meet
06:33these really cool people um that share a really common and experience together um and have the same
06:42interests so for me that's that's what I'm most passionate about. We're actually going to be flying
06:47a Piper Cherokee as well um 1973 so she's a little a year older.
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