Paragliding Rainbow Beach

Acknowledgment: Picture by Stefan Brandlehner on Flickr i.e. those are Stefan's feet, not mine. But they could have been.

I've been wanting to fly Rainbow for a while now. In fact I and two of my flying buddies, Tashi and Reid, had arranged to go there several weeks ago, but the weather forecast was not encouraging. Now that I'm heading off to live in Sydney the project had taken on some urgency. So I headed up on Boxing day morning and returned last night. Despite the season, there was room for a one-man tent at the camping and caravan ground.

Rainbow Beach is a little over three hours drive North of Brisbane. It's the staging post for 4WD enthusiasts and beach-fishing types to cross by ferry to Frazer Island or to drive along the beach at the edge the famous Cooloola National Park The "shorter" route, calculated by whereis.com or your GPS navigator, has you driving for nearly 100Km along corrugated dirt roads to Rainbow. Maybe this is a practical joke, or practice for the 4WDers, but the sensible route is North to Gympy and then across to the coast. I shan't make that mistake again.

Youtube video of Rainbow Beach

Jean-Luc, the local instructor and tandem flights operator, is not very interested in anyone who is not a paying student: when I asked him for a site briefing, seconds after handing up my club membership fee, he told me not to land on the beach in the bathing area. That's it. So I asked others who were a great deal more helpful on letting me know where the potential rotar and other turbulent spots were, and the better approaches for landing. In the end that's all that was really needed because it's the easiest flying ever.

The tricky bit is dealing with the venturi effect on the Blow when launching and landing. Beyond a certain point on that part of the sand-dune, the wind is completely horizontal but blowing at 15+ knots. Touch-down is gentle but the moment you try to collapse the canopy then you are dragged backwards. Everyone but the local experts seemed to get caught. I did better than many, thanks for good training from Phil Hysteck. And the f***ing sand gets into everything.

On Friday I had a flight of nearly two hours, happily cruising up and down the sand dunes up to about 275 metres above the ground. On Saturday afternoon I had another flight of about 2.5 hours doing much the same but practicing a lot more various control maneuvers. I only came down because I could feel I was becoming tired and sun-burned, and really needed a drink of water.

Who knows, with a decade or so more experience, I may be as good as Tex, from the Conandale club near Melany, here in this other YouTube video, when he and some friends flew Rainbow Beach about a month ago.