Our turn to wake at 3:30am and drive back to Apollo Bay in the dark of night.  We had a big day of flying planned  to take advantage of a following easterly wind and wanted to get in the air at the crack of dawn to fly past the most famous part of the Great Ocean Road- the Twelve Apostles past Princetown.  In the early morning light and absolute nil wind conditions  at the hush of dawn and heavily laden with full fuel Dave had a bit of trouble getting off and cracked a prop. But had brought along a spare which he fitted in time to join the next leg.  Alistair was worried about  his engine running  not quite right and elected to skip the first leg over some tiger country  towards Cape Otway.  With Dee out that left Kent and Rob to motor their way down the coast climbing to 3000ft  to maintain gliding distance  past the forest.  The forecast easterly wind was springing up  and we winged our way past the lighthouse at Cape Otway and on past the launch at Johanna  over green fertile rolling hills  progressively changing from forest into prime dairy country.  At Princetown, 50km away, we  rendez voused  with the ground crew and  landed for a stretch.  Dave and Alistair  joined us, but Kent   had  great trouble starting his  (usually very  reliable) Simonini engine. We had contacted the helicopter tour operators at the Twelve Apostles to advise them not to fly directly infront of our paramotors (!!!) and they appreciated the notification. 
The  first highlight of the trip was perhaps  flying past the  Twelve Apostles and various other famous land marks on this leg.  We got some spectacular photos and video footage of  our four colourful  APCO paramotor wings  floating over sheer rugged cliffs and craggy outcrops of rock that are the Twelve Apostles set against the pounding  greeny blues of the Southern Ocean. This section of turbulent  coastline has claimed many shipwrecks over the  last 200 years.  We joked that with landslips of recent years the Twelve Apostles are now  down to about seven!
 Winging our way towards Warnambool   70km  further on the abrupt rugged  cliffs give way to the rolling ridges of Flaxton and large sanddunes.  Dave and Alistair  needed  to land at Peterborough en route to refuel.  Their 9 litre tanks giving only  up to about 2 hrs flying time.  Kent and I had 16 litre tanks fitted to our Fly Products engines  giving us  more hours in the air  between refuels and we continued on.   Unfortunately though  over this stretch we had our next casualty.  Kent’s Simonini engine  abrupty stopped and Kent glided down for a landing.  Shaaron  promptly picked him up in the chase motorhome and Kent sadly discovered a blown piston cylinder.  I continued on alone to Warnambool over evergreen dairy country and landed in a double oval  next to the coastal reserve.  Some locals were gobsmacked  to see my little flying machine drop in and drove me  to some shops to buy some lunch.  I told them some other  paramotors would be turning up soon. A friendly retired lady gave me a cup of tea in her house overlooking the reserve and showed me over her impressive artwork decorating her walls.  Sure enough Dave and Alistair appeared in the distance  and a growing crowd of locals gathered to watch them land as I guided them to me  by radio.  The chase vehicles soon followed and we refuelled.  Since Kent was now without a paramotor he elected to drive and Dee and Shaaron elected to cut short their trip and catch a train home from Warnambool to attend to their demanding business.
Next maintenance casualy , Alistair’s Top 80 engine would not spool up to full revs attempting to launch out of Warnambool  and he had to resign himself  to  catching a ride with the chase vehicles for the next leg.   Dave and I  followed the coast  past Port Fairy and a seemingly endless  array of windfarm windmills aided by a comfortable easterly tailwind but  the skies ahead were progressively deteriorating into bleak  overcast   weather with the occassional raindrop. We proceeded causiously  until   eventually the skies began to improve again as we flew the 100km to Portland arriving late afternoon in glassy air.  We landed  on some grass by the beach and our faithful drivers turned up pronto.  We had flown a total of 220km today.  We stayed that night with local ppg pilot Brett who I  had taught to fly paramotors last year.  His complaint of Portland is that its usually too windy for paramotoring so he has to free fly! But he loves his paramotoring.
Somehow during Kent’s engine out today he had bumped in to Ben, a hang gliding and paragliding enthusiast who offered to help out in a variety of ways.  Incredibly Ben drove back to Torquay that night, picked up my spare paramotor and drove it all the way  to Portland in Western Victoria for Kent to use the next day.  Ben then joined us as our replacement driver!  He did ask about bringing his surfboard! He is one free spirit!

During the night it poured with rain and since the weather forecast for the next few days looked pretty bad with westerly winds and rain  Dave and Alistair got up at 3am and drove their caravan back to Adelaide to their pressing workloads.   Yet the day turned out to be (unforecast ) fine weather.  Once Ben arrived with the spare paramotor we drove to Murrels  launch and Kent and I launched into a light  headwind.  We pressed  15km  upwind  into an increasingly stiff headwind to get to the next windfarm on  some headland where the coastline would change direction and  offer us some relief from the headwind.   I think it took us   the best part of an hour  to fly those 15 km with use of full trimmers for speed before we could round the corner.  But we still faced   a cross- headwind , just not as venturied and strong  funnelling through the heads!  We got down low and dune-gooned only a metre or so off the beach  void of people as far as the eye could see.  We made better   progress.  The skies turned into a perfect sunny afternoon and the wind dropped out to virtually nil wind.  We landed on the beach to check a suspicious sound in my engine but everything seemed to check out  okay.  Relaunched for more dune-gooning and filming.  We approached a small low  rock outcrop breaking the continuous beach.  Just as I commited to climb over it my engine abruptly stopped!  I was only a metre or two up and on full trimmers and heading fast towards the rock outcrop. I turned towards the sea and flared hard as I skidded into the sand, my camers rolling into the sand from my flight deck!  Sand everywhere but otherwise no harm done.  Full trimmers on is faster than you might wish  for  when you have to land in the lee of a rock!  I climbed out of my harness and checked the engine.  My spark plug lead had rattled free of the spark plug.  I reconnected it and the engine fired to life.  Whew!  I was back in the air but Kent, with only a 9 litre tank was  getting low on fuel.   We elected to continue on  and if Kent ran out I would fly back to him with a siphon to give him some of my fuel.  The cross- headwind  began to spring up again making for a tricky wind gradient as we sought to stay down  low under the wind compressing on the sand dunes- lots of rapid throttle adjustments.  As the sun got low and I expected  Kent to sputter to a holt  any moment  Kent popped up over the sand dunes and there was the picturesque little town of Nelson at the mouth of the Glenelg river-our goal- 65 km from launch. We had made it!  I landed at the airfield.   We enjoyed a ripper counter meal at the only local hotel and parked by the river  for the night.

A cold front blowing in overnight would give us strong WSW winds  and make for impossible headwind today to cross into South Australia, but the  winds  were forecast to turn more southerly as you  neared  Victor Harbour, south of Adelaide.  So we elected to drive 200 km NW to the coastal port of Kingston to see if the wind had sufficient southerly aspect there  to  follow the beach NNW into the Coorong  leading to the Murray river mouth and would return to complete the Nelson- Kingston leg later. At Kingston  the wind was indeed cross-tailwind but quite strong and blustery in typical post-frontal  squally conditions.  Not your fair weather pilots ideal flying  day but I was keen to see how far I could get on a tank of juice with a cracking tailwind and figured I had a chance of making it to Victor Harbour 200km away.   Kingston had a  large take-off area  with a row of Norfolk Pine trees upwind   offering  partial shelter from the  solid winds .  I figured we could move back away from the pine trees  far enough to get smoothish  air to launch and then climb into the strong winds above.    It worked.  I launched and basically hovered above the beach with little penetration while I waited for Kent to launch.  His (replacement ) paramotor  was now giving him engine trouble and not winding out to full revs.  I landed to  inspect.  Air bubbles were sucking into the fuel line at full revs causing the engine to cough  and lose power.  Eventually Kent suggested I fly the leg  alone as his engine was going to take some significant maintenance.   I relaunched ,  wondering if I had sufficient hours of daylight left to get to Victor Harbour.  It would depend on the tailwind.  Even on full trimmers I was hardly penetrating the windstrength.    I excitedly turned downwind and followed the endless  beach at a cracking groundspeed with  the motorhome in chase driving parallel to the beach.  I climb to cloudbase  at about 2000ft and played dodgems with the small  but numerous scud clouds associated with the cold  airmass and occassionally moving around a few rain drops.  Then the Coorong  split  into beach and sanddunes  separated from the mainland by  continuous  salt lakes, at  places  several kms wide.  An engine out here would be remote indeed as the only vehicle access would be  a 4wd able to drive up the beach for 100km.  As the kilometres stretched on the  Coorong  beach  curved progressively   round to the left  making for an increasingly  strong crosswind  component which was slowing my progress.   I descended to sand dune height to see if I would make better time soaring the sand dunes but this seemed to be no improvement.     Climbing back out at 600ft my engine started to give off  a loud vibrating noise.  My heart sank!  Should I chance it  to fly over the Coorong  salt  lake  to reach the mainland and motorhome or should I descend immediately to the beach below and check the engine over?   I turned into wind, took the trimmers off and, surprise, was travelling backwards up the beach.  Full trimmers on I was still going backwards.  The wind had picked up.  As I got lower  the  wind gradient slowed  my  negative groundspeed  to a vertical descent. This would test my high wind ground handling!   I touched town and immediately spun around  and deflated the wing-  not too bad so far.  I bundled the wing and climbed out of the harness to inspect the engine.  One of the nuts attaching the muffler to the engine head had come loose and rattled off losing the compression spring in the process and  creating a gap between the muffler and head.  The remaining muffler nut was also about to come off.  Hmmmm. What to do… I pulled out my few tools I carry and some spare prop bolts and locktight nuts. These nuts  just happened  to be  the same size as the muffler   one I had lost.  Lucky me!  I  tightened on a replacement  nut and  adjusted the remaining nut.  The engine sounded normal again.  Now to relaunch  unassisted in these strong winds…  I climbed into the paramotor harness, fired up the engine and  walked away from the bundled wing  to tighten the lines  ready for ground handling.  The wind  was now really strong.  I flipped the wing open into a wall  to launch but one wing tip was caught through the A lines in  an inverted cravat…  I had great difficulty closing  the wing again  and had to pull one wingtip in by the lines while the remaining wingtip thrashed about causing more of a mess as the lines netted lots of the brittle dried seaweed on the beach. Also I was getting dragged back towards the sand dunes.  The wing finally depowered in a bundle I walked it  back to the waters edge of the beach.    I had to disconnect the risers, heap up sand on one wingtip (a la kite surfing launch technique)  and allow the wing to stream downwind so I could check and clear the lines and remove lots of dried seaweed from the lines.  Reconnecting  the risers to the paramotor  I  started up  the engine, ready to go but I could not free the wingtip from the  heaped up sand.  I got dragged again up the beach and had to pull in the wing tip by lines with the same ensuing mess.  I repeated the process several times getting more exhausted fighting the powerful wind.  At one point with the wing inverted and stable on the beach I thought to pause and ride out  strengthening winds  under a line of scud clouds.  I braced my legs against the paramotor resting on the sand   but in a few minutes in disbelief  and dismay I felt the wind strengthen  further  and the wing pull me out of my braced position and skidding  me  and the engine up the beach necessitating yet another   desperate reeling in of one wing tip and ensuing  mess .  The  wing in a bundle and  weighed down by sand I resigned myself to spending the night  sleeping in the sand dunes  to relaunch in the morning. Paragliders   make  great insulators as a blanket!  So  I climbed to the top of the first row of sand dunes  to radio the others in the chase vehicle.  No radio contact and no mobile reception.  What to do.  I had 8 litres of fuel and  my motor problem was fixed,  I was so frustrated the wind was so strong I couldn’t launch myself.  I had already wasted  an hour and a half of daylight  fighting the wind and wing.   Evening  was falling and the air was getting thicker and stronger and  turning  more and more straight up the beach in a straight tailwind.  I thought I should try just once more while I had a little daylight and strength left,  I had to keep trying.  This time I heaped up sand on the trailing edge of the middle of the  wing and crumpled in the wing tips laden with sand.   I climbed in the  harness, started the engine and backed away to tighten the lines.  Stable so far but I just could not get the necessary large  weight of sand to release from the trailing edge of the wing.  I reefed on the A risers until eventually the wing  shrugged off its weight but the wing  shot up and over  in a full symmetric tuck overhead before I could  even  begin to dampen it in time.  I reefed on the rear risers and waited for the wing to fall back on the beach and sort itself.  It did in a  perfect wall this time  with all the lines  and wing  clear (finally!!!)  but I was getting dragged   steadily  up the beach.   Yet I was stable and balanced  sliding up the beach on my feet.  It kinda felt cool. I was standing motionless yet moving smoothly, if you know what I mean,  like I was being towed on a ski lift.   I  pulled the wing up, nicely controlled  and sliding beautifully  on my feet   feeling more like I was powering  up on my kite board  and kite surfer and spun around and gunned the engine throttle.  For a moment I felt like I almost stopped getting dragged backwards as the propeller thrust kicked in.  I lifted off the beach in a vertical takeoff and immediately started flying backwards under the strong headwind.  I was euphoric and exhausted!  I was in the air at last!  If only I had another hour of two of daylight to make use of this incredible tailwind!  But nightfall was descending.  Climbing backwards  even under full trimmers  I gained height  until it was safe to cross over the Coorong salt lakes via a few islands and radioed the boys in the chase car.  They had been negotiating with a farmer to launch  a tinny  (dinghy )to cross the salt lake to check I had landed okay back on the beach.   Having flown across the salt lake I landed next to the highway on the mainland.  Again a vertical descent  on final with trimmers on full speed to an otherwise uneventful landing.  You just can’t afford to hesitate to spin around as soon as you touch down when the wind is up.  Ancient Chinese saying  “He who hesitates  will go ‘turtle’”. 
 The boys  turned up in the motorhome   relieved to see me and we drove a few km to Mengie on the shores of Lake Albert  and managed to find some hot food at a take-away store just closing.  I had flown 120km of continuous beach and was cross the wind  was just  too strong to relaunch unassisted.   My engine  maintenance delay had  blown my  chance to see how far I could get in tailwinds that really pushed the limit.

We woke to a beautiful sunny, even hot day, with a light north easterly wind  drifting in from inland. This demonstrates the changeability of  weather  in Southern Australia which alternates between  freezing gales off the Southern Ocean fresh from Antartica and dry hot winds coming down from Central Australia- on alternate days!  We scoured the  motor shops in town for some  bits.  Kent thought the fuel  filter might be particially blocked inhibiting his engine from  revving out to full revs.    We changed that over and tried a few other things  with no obvious improvement yet the engine was getting up  past half revs pretty smoothly before  struggling.  Kent   therefore tried to launch from the vast dried shores of Lake Albert whose water levels were depleted by the ailing Murray  river.  Hillariously  he  moon ran for  what seemed several hundred metres with the engine almost getting him free of the ground, but not quite.  Just not enough revs.  He would have to sit it out again.  After Kent’s comical effort it was my turn.  A forward launch into  ideal light wind drift I pulled the wing up smoothly  and  gunned the engine and stepped into some bog under the  crust of dried mud.  It caught my feet tripping me and the engine pushed me flat on my   stomach in the mud!  No harm done but a very funny photo with the wing perfectly inflated  above me as I face-planted  and  shoes and flight suit covered in mud. My second attempt was more successful.  The day was very thermic and I climbed  in a 4m/s thermal to 2000ft and headed west to get to the Murray river mouth and on to Goolwa and Victor Harbour.  This was going to be a bumpy day with  wall-to-wall blue skies and hot sun brewing  up solid thermals.  I set the engine on slow climb  as I would need height to cross  the  wide mouth of Lake Alexandrina.  I climbed above the temperature inversion at about 2500ft into glass air and continued climbing to 6000ft.  The view of the entire  lake and Coorong  feeding in to the Murray mouth was epic in the bright sunshine.  Below I could see the weirs that separate the  fresh water lake from the tidal salt water of the Murray mouth.    Looking ahead I could see the Fleurier Peninsula south of Adelaide and the ocean beyond it.  Over Hindmarsh Island I set the engine on slow descent  and at 1000ft found moderate  easterly winds which scooted me along  nicely past the coastal settlements of Goolwa, Port Elliot and Victor Harbour.  Nothing like a nice tailwind seabreeze!   I flew past  Victor Harbour  to the Bluff and on past Alistair’s farm and landed at Dave’s farm  west of  Victor Harbour.  90 kms today.   It was a gorgeous flight on a beautiful warm day and still lots of day left.  Dave left work early and raced home to pick me up.  The warm day had generated a SE seabreeze and it was on for free flying.  We met up with the chase motorhome  in Victor and  along with a few locals descended on  Pirrallilla, a little 600ft ridge behind Victor Harbour.  It was light but enough to stay up and 6 or 7 pilots took to the air including  local pilot Barry who had his first flight in his APCO Karma he bought from me.  Everyone flew except me- it was my turn to be driver.  Everyone happy to be flying again Dave suggested if we race back to his farm there was time for a sunset motor flight.  So off we rushed.  Since Kent had had mechanical trouble with 2 engines so far  and  consequently had to sit out  some of the legs of the trip,  I suggested he could take my  newish Fly Products Top 80 engine for a spin.   We joked about  him jinxing his 3rd engine.  He and Dave launched from  the farm and headed to Waitpinga beach  for a sunset flight.  20 minutes later Dave flew home and landed alone.  Where’s Kent?  You guessed it-  he had outlanded on the beach .  Dave drove  down in his 4wd and picked him up.  Kent  thought he might have got an air bubble in his fuel line when he  bounced through Dave’s wake as his fuel was low causing the engine to die.  That night in Dave’s shed  we worked on Kent’s 2nd engine replacing the carbie kit, fuel lines and filters.  It  spooled up to full power with ease  producing plenty of power! Kent  would be back in the air! We celebrated by watching some of Dave’s homemade DVD’s of his flying.

A northerly wind forecast.  A big day of flying planned to  complete the last  two legs of the tour.  We left before daylight and drove to the southern edge of Adelaide  on the foothills to fly back to Dave’s farm.  But now my engine wouldn’t spool up to full rev’s on engine  warm up, just like Kent’s engine the  last few days!   So frustrating these 2 Strokes!  It was smooth  power up to  a little more than half power and then it would choke.  We changed the spark plug- no good.  Since we were launching from a hill  I decided to launch with weak power and see if I had sufficient power to stay up and continue, otherwise I’d bottom land.  I launched and had the faintest climb rate and worked every bit of ridge lift and weak bubble I could find until I was sufficiently high to risk  heading south the 40km back to Dave’s farm.  The good news was Kent was back in the air.  The three  of us headed south together, taking photos of  Myponga launch and the reservoir behind it in the early morning sun.  I was able to slowly work my way up to 3000ft and could see ocean on both sides of the Fleurier Peninsular,  the windmill farm at Cape Jaffa,  Karangaroo island beyond   and even Lake Alexandrina  to the east  which I had flown past yesterday.  The Fleurier Peninsular is very picturesque.  I  shut down  the engine at 2000ft  above Dave’s farm and glided in for a landing.  A nice short flight of 40km.  We toiled on my engine  for the rest of the morning trying to find its problem and eventually did a full carbie kit changover only to find  it was still choked up at high revs! We were out of ideas and Ben, our fill-in driver, was under the pump to get home that evening.  We packed the paramotors in the motorhome trailer and  drove back around Lake Alexandrina to Kingston arriving late afternoon.  The wind direction was not suitable  to fly and there was  little daylight left so we drove on into the night  back to Portland in Victoria and dropped off Ben with  grateful thanks for his driving services.

A beautiful day with SW-SE winds  forecast- take your pick!   We joined local pilot Steve at his local church’s morning service.  I am a great believer  in the benefits of personal faith and connecting with  people of similar  persuasion wherever possible.  We met lots of very encouraging people and one was a 2 stroke motor mechanic with lots of years of racing experience who Kent happened to bump in to in a crowd of  150 people.  Kent set up my paramotor for him to have a look at.  By now my motor would only fire for half a second and then die.   Our new mechanic friend diagnosed the spark plug was shorting out.  Our only other spark plug was off the seized Simonini  and it  was looking very white from running lean but the spark was still good.  We changed the plug over and my engine ran  but choked after half power, as yesterday.  Our ingenious  new  friend suggested  the muffler was probably choked up with carbon deposits and to disconnect the muffler from the engine head.   We did this and the engine fired to life and ran smoothly up to full power  at  full revs.  What a break through!    The mechanic’s  suggested method of removing carbon deposits from the muffler  was quite intriguing.   He suggested  using oven cleaner to slosh it out as the oven cleaner would dissolve carbon,   or  using an oxycetaline  blow torch to  throw a flame up the muffler to burn out the carbon, but not too hot or you’d burn out the baffles.
Kent and I drove the 90km back to Nelson on the border of South Australia for me to complete the final leg of the trip-  195 km  from Nelson to Kingston.  A long trip needing  tailwinds  and very likely I would run out of  daylight.  We arrived at the little airfield at Nelson to a moderate  south –west wind. Darn!  That would be a cross-headwind and make progress very slow… perhaps only 20kph groundspeed…  30km up the coast the coastline would turn and run NW making the wind direction a straight crosswind which would be a little better.  Local advise was that the seabreeze  tended to swing the wind towards the south-east but it was already 2:30pm in the afternoon and no SE wind yet.  I launched at 2:45pm  using Kent’s resurrected  paramotor and had an engine out at 15 feet straight after lift-off!  I elected to land crosswind  rather than attempt to clear the barbwire fence ahead.  The cause?  An airbubble in the fuel line I presume.  The local GA pilots were impressed  with the simplicity of an engine out recovery in a paramotor.  I re-started the engine and climbed out without further mishap.  In the air the wind was less of a headwind than I thought and soon  swung turning into a crosswind, then  cross- tailwind and then straight tailwind and began to strengthen.  The small towns and  hamlets surrounding Port Macdonnell   drifted by  at a comfortable rate of knots.  This section of coastline reminded me very much of the  picturesque coastline of northern Tasmania which we did a tour of  two  years ago.  There was a sweet spot of  best tail winds between 200 and 250m altitude and compressed right along the coastline.  I was now  pulling ahead of  cars  moseying along  by the beach at 50-60kph and continuing to accellerate.  At Carpenter Rocks  I headed inland to follow Lake Bonney  up on the mainland side as the coast side had no road access.  There is a huge wind farm up the side of the lake with well over  one hundred windmills. They were churning away. But the power tailwind slowed to a crawl as soon as I moved away from the coast.  I was in a hurry so I climbed to 1500ft and crossed the lake back to the  beach and resumed my fast ground track.  There was  a very definite compression and acceleration of wind right on the coastline.  I saw one lonely 4wd on the beach with its occupant  fishing  and later I  noted and flew  over the  only road access to the beach .  Just then there was  a dull crack sound and my propellor began to vibrate.  The prop was still giving me thrust  but  it would likely disintegrate if I continued. I shut down the engine and turned into the wind to land and again found myself flying backwards.  Not again!  The wind gradient  down below  reduced my  negative groundspeed to a  vertical descent  and I landed comfortable, pulled in the wing and slid out of the harness to  look at the paramotor.  The prop had  a  rather large deformed section  where it had struck something and crushed the wood right out of whack.  The pull starter cord  recoil had failed and the  cord had unspooled until  the plastic pull grip had swung back  hitting  the prop.  Now what to do?  I looked up and to my great amazement   there was  a  4wd vehicle  turning on to the beach  at the only beach access I had only just flown past.  I hadn’t even seen that vehicle approaching  while I was in the air.  It could have been an angel for all I cared!  The driver soon had my paramotor in the back of his ute and drove me  a few kilometres towards Millicent to a farmer he knew.  The farmer was tickled pink that  a paramotor pilot  had dropped in on him on his Sunday afternoon, quite a change from pulling  bogged vehicles out of the beach, he said!   He was even more excited when I told him  a group of us had flown from Torquay to Adelaide and this was my last leg.    In his work shed  I used  multigrips and flat metal to  crush and squeeze the deformed wood back in to position on the propeller and superglue to  soak in to the porous wood and to reseal the carbon fibre overlay. Using gladwrap I built up a few layers of superglue to fill in the slight depression left in the prop. There, that should hold together now!  The farmer mixed up fuel and oil for me , refuelled my paramotor and  called in his family and his neighbours to watch me  launch.  It was 6:30pm.   I had lost nearly 2 hrs  of time but I should get a little  further  on before nightfall.   I again launched  downwind of trees to block the strong wind, but sufficiently downwind  where the wind is reasonably smooth.    I climbed out, this time with some  forward groundspeed, waved goodbye to my very helpful new friends to whom I am gratefully indebted  and turned tailwind and rocketed out of sight.   In the late afternoon the wind was as smooth as glass, even  over the land and I was moving over the ground fast.  I soon passed Kent who had patiently been waiting for me in the motorhome at Beachport and he advised me  the Bureau of Met.  had just issued a strong wind warning for the area  and he had strong winds at Beachport.     Yet I felt like I was on a magic carpet ride in glass air as the ground scooted past under me.  The sweet spot of fast air was now between 200-300m with slower moving  air  above and below that which  also varied in direction somewhat.  This was akin to hot air ballooning!   I thought I should be able to stretch to reach Robe in the  remaining daylight and as I flew up the 3 salt lakes on the way to Robe over the highway I  found that I was keeping up with cars travelling at 100kph-  well, they would slowly draw ahead of me after ages and ages but mostly I was tailing them.  I was flying along in a direct tailwind and it was so smooth!  As sunset neared and Robe approached I calculated I had a chance to reach Kingston 35km further north before dark.  Would I ? Could I?    This would be incredible to finish the trip covering  195km despite  launching as late as near 3pm and  inspite of losing 2 hrs fixing my prop.  I was struggling to get my head around my very rapid  progress.  I headed  north for Kingston  taking photos of the approaching sunset.   Kent was beneath me in the motorhome .  As  I neared Kingston  my localised little jet stream wonder wind  began to slow down  and petre  out  enabling  Kent   to   pull ahead of me in  the motorhome and  he reached  Kingston ahead of me.  I landed at last light in the same spot behind the trees I had launched from a few days prior.  The wind was a hushed calm  as I dropped below the wind above the trees and touched down for a perfect landing.  I had travelled the last 105km  in little over an hour!!  What an adventure! That little APCO Thrust HP (High Performance) paramotor  wing, a  hybrid reflex wing design, had proved  its  impressive worth to me over 7 days and 800kilometres.
We packed the paramotor and wing away and headed  for a celebratory counter-meal and then dropped in on some friends at Kingston where we stayed the night.  And drove home to Torquay the next day… to pull apart some engines…. And Kent caught a flight back to Queensland.  We did it!    Can’t wait for next year’s tour.