JOHN MARTIN'S TALES

I might have an altitude problem — the result of a spoiled upbringing. Or an updraft.

It began in the mid 1960s when I was six, seven, maybe eight.

My father was a journalist at the ABC and he sometimes dragged his family along to potential stories at weekends.

One time he interviewed a bloke who had built a hovercraft and I got to be a passenger scooting over the Tamar River mudflats.

Another time I had a ride in a Cessna. I sat on the pilot’s knee and drove the plane years before I got behind the wheel of a car.

But I prefer the story of the flying wheelbarrow.

Dad drove me and my sisters to a rural property but didn’t tell us why we were stopping there.

I know now why he didn’t tell us. If my sisters had known what was about to go down, or up, they wouldn’t have been happy.

These were more chauvinist times. I cannot lie. Boys came first in those days in my neck of the woods.

To be honest, I would have been happy with the scrumptious afternoon tea the farmer’s wife laid out for us.

But my father had to ruin it by asking me to go outside with him and the cockie.

“Why?” I asked.

“We thought you’d like a ride in a, um, wheelbarrow. It’s in the shed over there.”

I now know this was Secret Men’s Business code for ‘we’re going for a helicopter ride’.

But at the time I was thinking it was about me letting my sisters eat all those cakes and fresh scones.

Heck, I had already experienced wheelbarrow rides “helping” my father lay a garden path … and they weren’t as exciting as they were cracked up to be.

But I always did what I was told, so out with them I went, and we were soon up, up and away.

I’ve got no idea where this was or why the farmer even needed a helicopter. It wasn’t as if he was mustering buffaloes in the outback. It would have been cheaper to buy a sheepdog.

I can’t help thinking I didn’t really appreciate the experience.

I would savour it more nowadays.

I’ve read that helicopter tours will take you from winery to winery.

These aerial pub crawls are all the rage across Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

I imagine in Las Vegas your designated chopper driver is a real live Elvis impersonator who sings during the flight.

Flying in the Chapel.

Return to Hangar.

I’m caught in a draft.

A hunka, hunka burning aviation fuel.