According to locals the weather looked fine over both Lilydale and Mt. Beauty. To confirm this I called the aviation weather man. He claimed it was marginal flying weather and suggested we should wait until next day when the weather definitely would get better. "Never trust the weather man", we were told by two independent sources the next day - but we did, and had a quiet day in Melbourne. The only time we went outside was when we went for lunch together with Kerrie. The evening was spent in front of the telly with Indian take-away while Kerrie was attending a ball.

The weather hadn't improved the next day. In contrary - it had deteriorated. A Mt. Beauty local told us that the clouds were low and we would have to fly to Albury and take the Kiewa Valley down to Mt. Beauty. Roger Merridew agreed that it would have been slightly better to fly out the day before. On his advise we followed the western side of the Great Dividing and headed into Myrtleford, went east from there and down the Kiewa Valley to Mt. Beauty. The top of the ranges were covered in clouds - no way we could have tracked directly from Lilydale.

Annie, the manager of the Snowview Motel, wasn't home when we tried to call her from the aerodrome. Roger, another pilot working nearby, gave us a lift to The Bakery Cafe in town where we waited all afternoon (nice place to wait btw) until Annie finally came to pick us up.