Birds do it. Bees do it. Even pilots with over 10,000 hours do it! Let's play spot the airfield again. This time on a flight from Sydney to Brisbane in a Qantas Boeing 767-300. Our track took us right over the town of Casino in Northern NSW, just south of the Queensland border.
The horseshoe-shaped lake on the right-hand side of the airport is called Horseshoe Lagoon. Casino being about 30 nautical miles from the ocean, I reckon calling this pond a lagoon is a stretch of the imagination. Global warming may prove them right eventually though.
The main runway is 10/28, with a strip for gliders right next to it. I mean, not a parallel grass runway, the glider strip is adjacent to the runway and form part of the same runway surface, the limit of which is marked by just one set of gable markers.
Casino is named after its sister city of Cassino in Italy. No significant gambling activities there, which didn't prevent a facetious person at Airservices Australia from assigning the name GAMBL to a nearby IFR waypoint.
The airfield being uncertified it does not receive any RPT traffic, the locals go to nearby Lismore to catch up a Rex flight to Sydney.
The Casino region is a big cattle farming area. With the Casino Beef Week only a few weeks away, this is as good a reason as any other for a cross-country flight. For a very tasty $100+ burger, straight from the producer!
