''If you guys found Australia, I guess you can find Belfast without further assistance''

''If you guys found Australia, I guess you can find Belfast without further assistance''

Mike Mahon remembers the return to Belfast after the London Sydney Air race.

Mike Mahon

Trinity College Dublin

1969

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Mike Mahon

Work and Employment

Life Story

Belfast

1960s

We spent a few days relaxing in Sydney and then it was time to fly home. Our route back was much the same but with more refueling stops and at a more relaxed pace. We experienced an alternator failure going into Alice Springs, but got it fixed ok and time to explore the town. We met a local cop who explained to us that one of their duties was to patrol the roads on the outskirts of town and check all vehicles that they had extra tanks of petrol and water and warn them not to venture of the main roads. Apparently some out - of - towners had driven off into the bush to picnic and were never heard of again. We stopped at the RAF Base, Akrotiri, Cyprus and got a great welcome thanks to Terry. We were quizzed in detail by an officer, presumable intelligence, about what we had observed in Luxor. Terry left us in Heathrow and John and myself flew on to Belfast. The Heathrow controller gave us a SID( Standard Instrument Departure) and was nonplussed when we admitted we did not have the appropriate charts and steered us on radar clear of his zone remarking, ' If you guys found Australia, I guess you can find Belfast without further assistance'.

Irish Research Council for Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (IRCHSS)

Dr Kathleen McTiernan (Trinity College Dublin)

Dr Deirdre O'Donnell (Trinity College Dublin)