After a slightly longer pause than planned, April 2025 saw the resumption of the flight to relocate Planey from the USA to Australia. Schedule shifts meant that what I had originally planned to be two separate flights (the final run to Perth, and then a trip to visit East Timor a couple of weeks later) merged into one, leading to a slightly unusual routing.

I met up with my copilot for the first section of the flight in Singapore, a couple of days before departure. Griffin was a young pilot from Canberra, currently working his way through training for his Commercial Pilot License. He was also a qualified light aircraft mechanic, which I thought could be useful! We had met through social media a few days earlier when I had decided to seek out some company for the journey, and he had been impressively nonchalant about jumping straight on an international flight to join an ocean crossing in a little single engine Cessna. Apart from a visit to New Zealand, this was his first international trip, and he seemed to have settled straight into the traveling and made the most of his time in Singapore to see plenty of the key tourist sites.

Planey was parked in Johor Bahru, across the causeway from Singapore. Griffin and I met up again the morning before planned departure to make our way over to the Johor Bahru airport and get everything ready. A friend of mine in Singapore, Captain Jo, was once again taking care of the Malaysia permit for me and very kindly offered to drive us to the airport – we gratefully accepted, meeting him at an MRT station in the north of Singapore. He took us across the Tuas causeway, explaining that this secondary crossing was usually much quieter, and treated us to breakfast of traditional local roti near the airport before we headed to the hangar.

Planey was just as I had left him, albeit significantly more dusty. A quick check of the interior showed that the hot and humid conditions had not left him unscathed. Mold covered several surfaces such as the ferry tank and the control wheels, but fortunately some soap and water cleaned this right off. The nose strut was a little low so we topped it off with some nitrogen, and then topped off the fuel by adding 700 liters of Avgas; half to fill up the wings, and the rest into the ferry tank.

We pulled Planey out of the hangar and hosed him down in the sun, leaving him looking much nicer. Our contact at the hangar, Jane, had eyes only for Griffin however, exclaiming “Handsome boy is washing aircraft!” as she took videos for Instagram, or perhaps her own personal use. Work complete, Jane dropped us at the airport hotel where we checked into our rooms and finished up the flight planning, including emailing all kinds of requested documents through to Australia Border Force at Port Hedland airport for our planned arrival in a few days.

Another Singapore friend of mine (well, a Brit, but living there) had invited me to dinner a few days earlier, and today he was on the way back from a trip to Tioman. He was stopping at Johor Bahru for fuel before continuing on to the much more expensive Seletar airport, so Jane kindly picked me up at the hotel and ran me back to the airport to say hi to him as he passed through. This done, she dropped me back at the hotel.

Griffin and I met up for a short walk around the local area, including browsing in the local thrift store and purchasing a variety of snacks for the upcoming flights. Dinner was take-out pizza for dinner. Dominos let us down, cancelling our order after 20 minutes, but Pizza Hut came through for us.

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Jane was waiting for us on the road in front of the hotel, in the company pickup truck, at 0730 the next morning. We dropped our bags at the airplane, and made our way to immigration to check ourselves out of the country. Although Johor Bahru does advertise its immigration service as being 24-hour, Jane had contacted them the day before with our planned departure time just to make sure that they’d be there to stamp us out. The lazy idiots manning immigration, however, had clearly decided just not to turn up and we tried fruitlessly for more than an hour to track down someone who could help; the immigration offices were all deserted.

Eventually an untidy looking man in an undershirt, reeking of cigarette smoke, showed up and conducted the necessary formalities. We had already had to delay our flight-planned departure time by an hour, and made best speed back to the hangar for pre-flight, pulled Planey out, and called for start clearance. This was followed with a short delay by the en-route clearance, and finally permission to taxi. We taxied to runway 16, and prepared to fly the assigned Johor Radar 2 departure.

Our heavy weight had us climbing slowly, much slower than ATC was used to. They quickly took us off the departure and onto radar vectors, informing us that we’d be responsible for our own terrain clearance. They steered us all the way out around the west of Singapore to stay clear of airspace that was reserved for a major local military exercise involving Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Australia. Our requests for a turn to the left to cut the corner were politely refused, with ATC informing us that we could ask again when handed over to Singapore radar.

West of Singapore we finally received our left turn. Our requested IFR altitude of 7,000ft was denied and we were told to fly at 7,500ft instead; a VFR altitude, despite our being on an IFR flight plan. This made no difference to us through, and forged our way south, spotting an Air Canada flight passing overhead. Around an hour into the flight, we hit the major milestone of crossing the equator from the northern hemisphere into the southern

Singapore radar tried a few times to hand us over to Palembang but at our altitude it was impossible to make contact. They passed us instead to Dabi Info who looked after us for a while until eventually, 25 miles south of NIPES intersection, we were able to raise Palembang and continue with them.

From Palembang, we were handed over to Radin Inten Approach as we continued to drone through the Indonesian skies. This controller had us rather confused, as he repeatedly asked us to contact the next controllers on frequency 113.96 which is neither a valid communication or navigation frequency. My guess is that he may have been trying to send us to an HF frequency of 11396, but our flight plan clearly showed that we were not equipped for HF, as did my repeated explanation of this on the radio. He eventually told us to continue “with company” instead, so we just went on our way out over the water towards Christmas Island.

Soon the southern tip of Sumatra fell behind us, and not long after that Java was out of sight to our rear as well. Ahead lay a couple of hundred miles of sea and, after that, the Australian territory of Christmas Island. About an hour out we received a call on the air to air frequency; a Virgin Australia flight departing from Christmas Island had somehow heard that we were on the way in, and they were helpfully calling up to give us some tips and information about operations there. This done, they wished us a safe flight and were soon out of range on their way south.

Christmas Island soon came into view ahead. It is an overseas territory of Australia, transferred from the British in exchange for $20 million in 1958. It has a population of about 1,700, roughly split between Australian/English, Chinese, and Malay populations. Almost two thirds of the island is a national park, and the amount of tourism is gradually increasing.

Compared to its flat namesake in the Pacific which I had flown through two years before, this islandrose out of the sea to a significant height and was much more developed. We were lined up with the runway in use and flew a straight in approach to a pretty poor landing; my three months away from flying had clearly allowed a little rust to creep in and I flared too high above the runway. We taxied to bay 3, our assigned parking spot, and shut down.

We were met by Griffin’s friend Lachie, the older brother of one of his school mates. Lachie was one of two Australian Navy personnel based on the island, and responsible for care and maintenance of the RIB boat stationed there among other things. Not far behind him came the representatives from Biosecurity and Australia Border Force who were very relaxed and welcoming. I provided the completed certificate showing that we had performed the in-flight insecticide spray required by biosecurity, and Border Force completed the formalities to welcome us to the country.

I collected my rental car from the friendly gentleman who had been waiting for me to hand over the keys. No Avis or Hertz here – all the cars come from independent local operators. I had even been able to choose my specific car, by licence plate, when I reserved it. I had not quite realised that the operator would be coming out to the airport just for me, and had neglected to mention we were arriving independently of the day’s two commercial flights. He had been out to both of these commercial flights to try and find me, and had been about to give up on me as a no-show when someone told him that a small plane was on its way in! I thanked him for sticking around and jumped into my slightly battered Toyota Rav4 to head to my accommodation; Griffin had headed off with Lachie to stay at the military house.

After a bit of time resting and responding to emails to finalise our Port Hedland arrival I was collected by Lachie and Griffin on their way to Flying Fish Cove, named after the HMS Flying Fish. This was a British vessel which landed on the island in 1886. The island itself was first sighted by Europeans in the year 1615, and it was later named Christmas by Captain William Mynors of the East India Company’s vessel Royal Mary after he sailed past it on Christmas Day.

My rear end had hardly touched the seat before I was handed a beer, and off we went for a swim. The shoreline of the cove still looked fairly battered from a cyclone which had hit the island just a month or so earlier. I was persuaded to jump off the jetty to join these two more intrepid swimmers, and found that it looked a lot higher once you were on it than it had from the shore. The water was warm and clear, and we enjoyed some time floating around before heading up to an overlook to check out some old fortifications and some great views of the cove.

I was pleased to be able to get some good views of the Pacific Centurion, an offshore tug which had been contracted by a shipbroker friend of mine for some work at Christmas Island, and which had arrived just a day or so earlier. Also visible were two Australian Border Force vessels. One of these was either the Ocean Shield or the Ocean Protector; I forgot to check the marine tracking sites, but it was equipped with a helideck at the bow which narrows it down to one of these two.

Dinner that night was at a popular local gathering spot, Rumah Tinggi. My rather disappointing steak was washed away with too many rounds of drinks to count, driven by the inexhaustible Lachie.

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