In Search of Shangri-La
It was starting to sound like something straight out of James Hilton's Lost Horizon. Here was my flying instructor calmly telling me about a pass through the Great Dividing Range that linked Mansfield in Victoria to the Latrobe Valley in the east of the state. It was used, he said, by pilots transiting between the two; a swathe cut through tiger country.
I have been flying around Victoria since 1985, and to my mind no such mountain pass existed. Surely I would have found it myself years ago if it was really there? I checked the VNC, and according to the hypsometric tinting, I was right: there is no pass. To double-check myself I went to Google Earth and the terrain depiction agreed with me.
And yet, Murray insisted it was there.
This mountain passage was starting to take on the aspects of mysticism and sanctuary that Hilton assigned to his fictitious Shangri-La, so I rang Latrobe Valley Aero Club instructor John Warren, calling on him to tell Murray he was basically nuts.
"Yeah … the Macalister River valley," Warren said easily, blowing my scepticism out of the water and making a farce out all my research.
Not one to argue with two very experienced instructors, I conceded defeat, which immediately triggered a desperate need to fly this valley as soon as possible; to see for myself this route through the alpine peaks that has successfully eluded my attention for 36 years.
My mountain flying experience
