Ballooning in the Outback

Where I found myself demanding the stars be turned back on.

Stable Diffusion image by the author

My alarm went off at 3:00 AM, beginning what was one of the longest work days of this job. To arise at that horrible hour is inexcusable under most circumstances, but today we had good reason for enduring this punishment. We were going on a balloon ride, all fifty of us.

Those fifty passengers were making an all-inclusive, same-airplane, around the world journey and I was traveling with them. Two of us were shooting a sales film about the six week trip, and for this early call to go balloon riding, we were both on the clock.

The best time to launch a balloon is just at sunrise, so you need to arrive really, really early, especially if you’re launching nearly a dozen balloons. Sunrise in Alice Springs in November is at about five thirty and the math dictated that, at 3:30 AM, a small army of passenger buses, support vans and big trucks towing big trailers departed our hotel.

A half hour later the entire convoy had ground to a halt. The balloon managers needed to measure the wind. So, while they were doing their science things, most of those fifty passengers stood outside the tour buses somewhere in the outback in the dead of night.

It was fabulous. The sky was absolutely clear and most of our attention was directed upwards. There were low murmurs from the customers as they gaped at the sky. Someone pointed out the Southern Cross.

I was pissed off.

All around us was parked our entourage of tour buses and balloon support vehicles. Diesels, they all sat with engines idling, headlights on.

“This is silly”, I said to Dave, my filming partner.

“Yeah, it is”, he agreed.

I searched out the tour director, unsure of how to approach him with our problem.

“This is silly”, I said.

“What’s silly?”, he said.

“All of us standing around in the outback under a spectacular starry sky surrounded by noisy, stinky trucks with blinding headlights. Most of these people have never seen the southern sky before.”

He looked at me for a few long seconds.

“You’re right”, he said. And he disappeared.

Somehow he convinced the Aussies to comply and in a few moments, all the engines and headlights were off.

The result was satisfyingly spectacular. And the longer we all stood there, as our eyes adjusted to the darkness, the more spectacular it got. The bitter truth for us northern hemisphere dwellers is that southerners have better stars than us. In the southern hemisphere, when you look up, you’re looking more directly into the center of the galaxy. Not only are there are more stars, but some of them are much brighter than those we see on the top side of the world.

There are no darker skies than those of the Australian Outback and on that night we had ideal viewing conditions for one of nature’s best shows. The excited chatter and pointing arms of the passengers was reward enough, but I must admit to a little bit of smugness at the results of my efforts. Even better, just as I was reaching a peak of inner self-satisfaction, a shooting star streaked across the sky. Somebody up there approved of my location management.

But more rewards awaited us on what was the dawn of the longest and most demanding day of our round the world shoot.

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Flight in nearly any aircraft is a noisy process. It’s called powered flight. Those engines are noisy. But that’s uniquely not true in a balloon. Even gliders aren’t silent, they depend on rapid motion, airspeed, to stay aloft. It’s true that the huge propane fire that keeps the balloon airborne is loud when it’s burning, but it only runs for a small portion of the time, after which your ride is completely silent.

What sound you do hear floats up from the ground as if from a dream. You can hear the distant sounds of dogs barking and and human voices. Vehicles driving a thousand feet below are clearly audible. Since you’re moving with the wind, there’s not a hint of a breeze. You’re simply floating silently, effortlessly above an endless carpet of beauty.

Around us were more than a half dozen other balloons, the occasional whooshes from their burners sounding like the exhalations of distant dragons. It was all just too wonderful. You never quite get over the magic of a hot air balloon ride.

After an hour or so of floating over the landscape, it was time to “land”, a euphemism if ever there was one. A balloon flight is basically a long duration slow motion crash landing, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the last minute of flight. The only direct control the pilot has is height, regulated by the extent of the propane fire. Less fire and you descend, more fire and you ascend. Everything else is controlled by the whims of air currents you can neither see nor feel. That’s why the balloon operators were so carefully measuring the wind.

As we approached the ground at an attention-getting clip, it became apparent that the landing would be more dramatic than we anticipated. Takeoffs are reassuringly gentle - you simply float upwards, away from the ground. Suddenly, gracefully, you’re flying. Landings are not graceful. They are the exact opposite of graceful.

There’s no runway, no actual planned landing site, there was just the vast expanse of the outback unreeling underneath us at an unnerving pace. There are no brakes.

The lower we got, the more unnerving the sight. At about ten feet we began to gradually bleed off our ground speed by dragging our twenty foot long basket on the scrub and small trees that were rushing under us. Loud crunching and smacking noises ensued and it was at that moment that I realized the importance of the liability document I’d signed before boarding.

Bouncing and bumping across the terrain, mowing down the grasses and shrubs as we rubbed off speed, we eventually slowed to a walking pace. When our basket did finally grind to a stop, the balloon above us itself did not. It kept inexorably moving, slowly tipping our basket over on its side, where a half dozen passengers, all laughing their heads off, clutched at hand holds as what had been the floor became a wall at our feet.

It’s customary at the end of a balloon ride to stand around the deflated craft and drink champagne. But this morning, the traditional ritual was postponed. There was no time to waste on alcoholic self congratulation, and no sooner had we landed and congratulated ourselves on our intrepid courage, we boarded the buses, opened the champagne and drove away, leaving the balloon company to pack up.

We had a plane to catch, and it was waiting for us at the Alice Springs airport, right where we’d left it yesterday when we arrived. We had a long way to go before bedtime.

Late that afternoon, rather than enjoying the dry and pleasant warmth of springtime in central Australia, we were sweltering in equatorial humidity as we explored an ancient temple in Indonesia. We’d arrived in Bali.