By Erik Skye

December 23, 2010:

Here's the spin video promised from Day 8:

A spin is caused by yaw, in combination with a stall. Watch the horizon compared to the longitudinal axis of the plane. In the video, the Tiger Moth progresses to a greater and greater angle of attack (nose up). Then, the rudder (your yaw control surface) is kicked full (creating full yaw). Down goes the plane in what is technically called "auto-rotation". It will do this all the way to the ground (at about 1000 ft of loss per 3 revolutions, depending) unless you control it out of the spin: Pitch forward (break the stall), ailerons to neutral, rudder full and opposite direction of spin, and then simply pull out of the dive. Presto! And lots of fun when you understand it. Thanks for the video clip Shane.

Here's another song for my mates, that I just found on this trip: Dan Black - Symphonies (Just click "play" on that song on my list.)

Started the day in Denmark. It’s a nice town, and similar to Margaret River, it mainly survives on tourism. I like this place, and I’m trying to figure out why I have such different feelings about the two towns. I suppose, unlike Margaret River, Denmark is on the ocean, its streets are broken up in a curious and almost un-planned way (yet I suspect it was part of a master plan, for it works beautifully), and I suppose it feels like local people really call this home (more than a place to work). Having said that, I see there is a youth hostel here (just like in Pemberton), and most of the wait staff I’ve dealt with are foreigners. I’m getting the impression there’s a labor shortage (a vacuum to draw in outsider workers). But there are plenty of weathered-looking men out in their diesel work trucks this morning too. Denmark’s rougher around the edges while Margaret River’s too polished. I do like Denmark, but it’s time to move on.

Albany’s a wonderful town with a population of around 32,000, and I spent most of the day here. The beaches are plentiful and incredible. The area seems to have heaps of natural and cultural depth. There's a University of Western Australia extention, an old historic red brick gaol (jail), stone churches, tudor style buildings, etc... It used to be a whaling port, harvesting 850 Sperm and Humpback whales annually, until 1978. The historic whaling station has been converted into "Whale World", where they provide tours of the original facilities and explain the processes of obtaining whale oil and meal (everything other than the oil, which was dried and used as fertilizer and animal feed – they wasted nothing from the whales). Whale World was very well done and included 3D movies (the theaters were actually inside the original huge whale oil tanks).

I think I finally got a decent kangaroo photo!

The rugged coastline here is where Antarctica and Australia were once connected (45 million years ago). The rocks on Antarctica’s Windmill Islands still match the rocks on the shores of Albany.

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