Waking up in Geelong

For most people a winter drive up the mountains means a skiing holiday, but for me it was a chance to photograph planes at Australia’s highest altitude airport.

That airport is Mount Hotham, opened in 2000 to serve the ski resort of the same name, which is around 20 kilometres down the Great Alpine Road and 500 metres further up the mountain. The airport itself is located at an elevation of at 1,298 metres (4,260 feet) above sea level, and just below the winter snow line – when I visited light snow was falling.

I timed my trip to fall during ski season, when QantasLink operates flights between Mount Hotham to Sydney. As you can see by the schedule, the flights target people flying in for a weekend at the snow, and then flying back to the city of work on Monday.

Inside the terminal were all the usual things you expect to see – check-in desks:

Departure gate:

Arrivals gate:

And the luggage carousel:

The airport is located about 25 kilometres (as the crow flies) from the nearest town of Omeo, so the electricity supply is provided by solar panels and a wind turbine supply.

With the first QantasLink flight soon to arrive, I asked the airport manager whether there was any way to get to the other side of the runway to get a photo – no trouble on that front – he said to just follow the boundary fence all the way around.

The single asphalt runway is 1,460 metres (4,790 feet) long, with the eastern end sitting on an embankment, and the centre section at the bottom of a cutting.

View Larger Map

I climbed to the top of a large hill on the north side of the airport, where I was able to see both ends of the runway.

Down on the apron below was a single private plane – a Piper PA-31-310 Navajo with registration VH-OYM.

I waited around atop the hill, watching the clouds drift past the sun and threaten to drop snow, when the pilot fired up the Navajo and took off.

The next plane I saw was something more upmarket – Cessna Citation 501 business jet VH-VPM.

By that point I had been standing around in the cold for over an hour, and the QantasLink flight was nowhere to be found, and I figured it would be a good idea to phone the automated flight information line to see where it was up to. Turns out the morning flight had been cancelled!

With a few hours until the next scheduled flight, I retreated to the car to warm up, returning to the hill with enough time to see the arrival of a QantasLink Dash-8 200 turboprop – running around 30 minutes late.

After turning around at the end of the runway, the aircraft taxied back down the runway to the terminal.

A number of ground crew were in attendance, who unloaded the plane, and then shut down the engines.

The plane sat on the ground for an hour, with snow starting to fall from the sky as the light started to fade. I was worried that it would soon be too dark to photograph the departure, but got lucky – the engines came to life, and the crew taxied out to the runway.

The short field performance of a Dash-8 200 sure is impressive – 300 or so metres down the runway and the nose was already in the air!

Up, up and away!

Further reading

• Cockpit view of the approach to Mount Hotham Airport
• QantasLink pilot’s experience flying into Mount Hotham

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