All eyes were on the sky above Mount Gambier’s famed Blue Lake on Saturday as the Air Force Roulettes performed over the attraction.
The six roulettes spent 10 minutes enthralling crowds gathered around the lakes precinct, as they twisted and turned effortlessly in the sky.
The roulettes visited Mount Gambier en route to the Mildura Air Show, using the opportunity to practice their aerial acrobatics.
Roulette 3 Brodie spoke to The SE Voice following their visit, which proved popular with the pilots.
“We were just as excited to be flying over your region, it was good to get a couple of practices in before our appearance at Mildura,” Brodie said.
“We came from Sale at the start of the day, we displayed in Portland, we did stop in Portland and say hello to the public there, then we came to Mount Gambier and ended up in Mildura,” Brodie said.
“Unfortunately we were not able to stop in Mount Gambier as there was a chance we would not be able to depart once we had gotten in due to weather.
“But we did a practice display over the Blue Lake, it’s something we call a special venue show … we will be performing it in Hobart this weekend. It was our first practice in a while.”
Brodie said her fellow roulettes were impressed by the beauty of the Blue Lake city.
“It looked pretty magnificent from the air, particularly the colour of the lake is certainly noticeable as you are flying across and the surrounding terrain, it is a lovely area as well as the agricultural areas,” she said.
“We could see the crowd, particularly at the vantage points to the north of the lake, which would have been our crowd centre.
“We go down to 200 feet throughout the passes, low enough that you can make out how many people are watching.
“We could see there was a crowd at the lake itself for the performance.”
Brodie, who has been flying for 15 years and joined the roulettes three months ago, said the team performed some formational displays to entertain those on the ground.
“We fly as a formation with the six of us doing aerobatics, then split into a four ship and two ship, where the two ship does some passes by themselves, then we reform into the six ship to conduct some more formation aerobatics,” she said.
“We have a few good venues, however I do enjoy doing it over the local venues, in particular a stunning natural feature such as the Blue Lake makes it a little bit more spectacular.
“Thanks for having us, it’s always nice to get out in the community and perform for the community and get feedback, and the feedback we got was positive.”
