Spirit Of Australia

Dark thunderclouds loomed as I was waiting for my flight. I walked around in the terminal and got this picture.

Flight Status: DELAYED

Melbourne airport, on my way home...tonight hopefully. I took this picture in the Virgin Lounge.

Superjumbo

This is the magnificent Airbus A380. It was taken from some distance in low light so not the best clarity, but it still shows how impressive this aircraft is.

Gripen over African Skies

This is the Swedish built Saab JAS 39 Gripen (Eng: Griffen). These three pictures are paintings done by my dad Charl Mӧller, depicting some of the aircraft purchased by the South African Air Force. They are on my list of favorite fighter jets, painted by my favorite artist.

Black Hawk

These two Black Hawk helicopters followed shortly after the Tiger, also photographed from the Kurilpa bridge in Brisbane.

Formidable Tiger

This is the Eurocopter Tiger, a combat helicopter in use with the Australian Army. I took this one from the Kurilpa bridge in Brisbane as it was practicing manoeuvres for the Brisbane Riverfire display.

Reader Appreciation

I recently read Olga’s blog and saw my name at the bottom! Yay! Her post was titled Reader Appreciation Awards and I was one of her nominations. The idea is that you mention the person that nominated you, tell seven things about yourself that people probably don’t know, add a picture or two (fitting since this is actually a photography blog) and then you nominate 5 other people. So first of all, thank you Olga. Olga's blog is one that I visit regularly and enjoy very much. If you can read Afrikaans do yourself a favour and pop in there. If you can’t, learn Afrikaans and then do yourself a favour and pop in there. You can try Google Translate, but good as it is, it’s not the best tool to translate these sort of texts, especially for the lesser-known languages like Afrikaans. 

Anyway, I digress. Here you go… 

Did you know:

• I was born in Zimbabwe during the Rhodesian Bush War, a civil war in which my father was enlisted.

• My favourite poem is “The road not taken”, by Robert Frost. Like most high school boys I was not fond of poetry, but had a brilliant English teacher who introduced me to this particular poem, amongst others.

• At the age of 16 I was accepted into the prestigious Randolph Macon Academy, a military school in Virginia where you can start your pilot training as part of your school curriculum. This was one of those roads not taken and I often still wonder how my life would have turned out had I gone. Like my grandfather who, as a young boy, was offered a job as a cowboy somewhere in the US. I guess if he had gone I would not be here today and you would not be reading this blog. But I’m starting to become too philosophical for my own liking, so let’s move on.

• I’m allergic to bee stings and caviar.

• I love condensed milk and can easily finish a can in a single session.

• I have weird music taste, ranging from opera to metal, from Afrikaans folk to eighties, alternative to rock to classical. It all depends on the mood. Some days I might be listening to Prodigy, other days to Maria Callas. Weird, I know. At the moment it’s Sarah Brightman.

• I was once almost trampled by a heard of charging rhinos (another road that, if taken, would have ensured that this blog never came into existance)

Two Alouette choppers being refuelled in a field. The picture was taken by my dad while in the Rhodesian army.

Another Alouette III chopper being inspected by the pilot and technician. They used a country school's sports grounds as a base.

My dad who I love dearly and have great respect for, pictured here on the far left

Yours truly, age six

My turn to nominate: 

Boer In Ballingskap 

The Thumper 

Cunningstuff 

Thinking Sci-Fi 

de Freitas Clang

Leaving, on a jet plane...

I stood on the pier at Barangaroo looking towards the Anzac Bridge when I took this picture of a departing Cathay Pacific Boeing 747-8F.

If you zoom in to closely to the airplane (probably not possible on the lower resolution version of the image posted here) you notice that it is part of Cathay Pacific's Cargo fleet. The design of the plane (shorter upper deck and sawtooth engine nacelles) identifies it as being a brand new plane. The first one of these were delivered to Cathay Pacific in December 2011. These freighters have higher payloads (154 tonnes) and have a longer range (8 130km, or 5 050 mi) than that of their older cousins, the 747-400s.

I got all these interesting facts from the Wikipedia Cathay Pacific and Boeing 747-8 pages.

Spirit of Australia

This is one of the Boeing 747 Airliners in the Quantas fleet. According to aussieairliners.org this particular plane (VH-OJM) was ordered by Quantas on Jan 31, 1990. It rolled off the production line in 1991 and was first flown as VH-OJM - August 30, 1991. These pictures were taken as it flew over Brisbane.