Five-Foot Varmints John Anderson
an airport bookstore so I could buy a paperback novel to occupy my time over the Pacifi c.) The fl ight across the ocean was preceded by a hop from Rapid City to Denver and a fl ight from Denver to Los Angeles. Then, after arrival in Syd- ney, we still had another short fl ight to Brisbane. By the time we reached our hotel in downtown Brisbane we defi - nitely had jet lag and were more than ready for a catnap. We were to meet Marc McDonnell,
L.P. Brezny got one of the fi rst hogs of the trip. At left is guide Marc McDonnell.
nonstop fl ights in the world. It is not the longest, but it certainly is among the longer ones. On the plus side, L.P. Brezny and I got to fl y across the Pacifi c in one of the relatively new Airbus A380 double-deck, wide-body, four-engine
F
rom Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia, is one of the longest
jet airliners with a range of 8,300 nauti- cal miles and, Airbus says, wider seats than their competitors. Such seats were a defi nite plus … but even with slightly wider seats and slightly more leg room, it’s still a long fl ight. We left L.A. going on 11:00 p.m. and arrived in Sydney early in the morning. (I was glad to fi nd
our hunting guide, about 1:00 p.m. the next day so we had time to kill before going after some very large varmints. After a snooze we stepped out of the front door of our hotel onto a busy street in downtown Brisbane … a street closed to vehicular traffi c except for de- livery trucks, and those show up mostly early in the morning. We walked up the promenade, found an outdoor café, and enjoyed watching the pedestrian traffi c while we ate. Then we strolled along the street, stopping in a few stores, and watching more people walk past before returning to the hotel. In the morning we ate breakfast at
an open air café not far from the hotel and then walked down the street several blocks until we found a large bookstore. I picked out two photo books (which I like as souvenirs when traveling) about Australia, and L.P. selected one about the animals of the country. When Marc showed up it was like
old times, as he had lived in the United States for about a dozen years and I had met him at our V.H.A. Jamboree. He had displayed the Big Shooter rotating shooting bench at several Jamborees, a bench he designed, with fabrication done by a fi rm in the Minneapolis area. L.P. had met Marc a year earlier when he had traveled to Australia to hunt with him. Our drive was pretty much nonstop conversation as we tried to catch up on everything. The trip took us west of Brisbane
The author’s CZ rifl e in .375 H&H was more than a match for this “wood ‘roo.”
Page 102 October — December 2011
to Toowoomba (about a two-hour drive) where we had dinner with Scott Withey, his wife, Alison, and their four children. Scott is a businessman and the owner
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