The Morning Glory…3
Rick Bowie, a glider from Byron Bay, rides the rising air at the front of the wave in which the Morning Glory forms
And somewhat elusive, it seems. After three more cloud-free mornings, I am beginning to wonder if I’ve been set up for the biggest anti-climax of my life. I ask Christie what signs I should be looking out for. ‘If you have a really good sea breeze blowing all day, which brings with it a lot of moisture in the air and sets up a good wave guide, and then you have a ridge of high pressure over the Cape York Peninsula, these are ideal conditions - you’re almost guaranteed to see a Morning Glory.’ Locals have their own ways of telling if one is on its way: the glass doors to the beer fridges in the pub frost up when there is the moisture in the air required for the cloud to form. But they are looking crystal clear. Moreover, the wooden tables in the cafe of the Savannah Lodge are completely flat. They are supposed to bend upwards as a result of the humidity when the conditions are right. Things are looking unpromising all round.
I’m not the only one worrying. Ken Jelleff, a 48-year-old from near Melbourne, has spent 12 days driving the 1,800 miles to Burketown in a 4WD with his wife and his microlight aircraft. We are sat having a ‘mugacino’ at the distinctly flat tables in the cafe of the Savannah Lodge after yet another cloud-free morning. This is Jelleff’s fifth year of travelling to Burketown to soar the Morning Glory and with no cloud arriving over the last few days, he is beginning to wonder if this year he is going to see one at all. He is telling me about a glider pilot who came here for two weeks and didn’t see a single Morning Glory. The glider stayed an extra week, but the cloud still refused to show. After one final week, he had to head home, only for the Morning Glory to come though the following day. ‘We’ve been here for five days now,’ says Jelleff, ‘and if our luck doesn’t change, then the same thing could happen to us.’
There must be something pretty special about flying on this cloud for gliders to be prepared to tow their craft thousands of kilometres without even being sure that the cloud will make an appearance. ‘It’s unparalleled. It’s the ultimate gliding experience,’ Jelleff enthuses. ‘Despite the forces that are at work as this wave is rolling along, the air that you are gliding through is as clear as crystal. It’s a form of gliding that is exactly like surfing. When you are on the Morning Glory, you are surfing a cloud.’ To stay up in the air, a glider needs lift, or rising air, and this is something that the Morning Glory has in abundance. It is the wave of air in which the cloud forms that the gliders surf. But while invisible solitary waves of air do occur all over the world, the Morning Glory cloud shows the gliders where the wave is. And it is the high chances of the cloud forming here during the humid months of September and October that makes the Burketown region unique.
Unfortunately for Jelleff, two more days of heading out to the airstrip at daybreak and waiting for the cloud lead to nothing. He and his wife have to pack up the microlight and start the long journey back to Melbourne. ‘There’s always next year,’ he says, trying to sound cheerful. The possibility of the same thing happening to me is beginning to look equally real. Even Dawn, the old aboriginal lady on neighbouring Bentinck Island, has performed her ‘warmur’ dance for me, which is supposed to bring the wind that carries the ‘yippipie’ - the local aboriginal name for the Morning Glory. Her foot-stamping and shouting seem to bring some local gusts of wind, but it is clearly not enough, as the following mornings show no signs of the dramatic cloud. ‘We’re not God,’ says Paul Poole back at the Savannah Lodge. ‘We can’t just turn the Morning Glory on and off when we want.’
