Bonza idea, that: Let’s fill up those planes

THURSDAY’S February 23 Johno’s Say was called “Multicultural Melbourne magnificent” and talked about our recent visit to the southern capital. The story concluded, “Melbourne is a great place to visit and let’s hope the new airline Bonza adds plenty of return services from Toowoomba Wellcamp Airport.”

Stone the Crows, the very next day The Chronicle’s headline read, “Flight bonanza – tourism set for takeoff as airline announces hundreds of flights to Garden City,” and continued, “some 286 extra flights per week will be touching down and taking off from Wellcamp on those three routes alone (Melbourne, Townsville and the Whitsundays).

I know a few good The Chronicle readers tune in for Johno’s Say, but I didn’t realise The Chronicle and I had such influence in the airline industry!

From April 17, Bonza will fly four weekly return flights from Toowoomba to Melbourne, two to Townsville from April 19 and two to the Whitsundays from April 21.

You’ve got to admire the Wagner family for having the courage to build an international airport in regional Australia, who would have thought it possible?

If my memory serves me correctly, the original name for the airport was “Brisbane West Wellcamp Airport” and I understood the reasoning because, from an international perspective, it gave the impression Toowoomba was close to our capital city.

In time the name morphed into its current form.

During one of my earlier retirements, I was approached by a French spectacle lens manufacturing company to launch a charity in Australia aimed at reaching out to low-socio-economic schools to examine children’s eyesight and provide free spectacles where needed.

I contacted the, then, five optometry schools at QUT, University of NSW, University of Melbourne, Deakin University and Flinders University to ask if final year students would join me to undertake vision screening under the supervision of clinical staff and generous local optometrists.

It all came together beautifully, with an enormous amount of goodwill on the part of the heads of school and volunteer optometrists.

For several years I made the trek, each Sunday, to places like Adelaide, Geelong, Melbourne and Kensington (NSW).

They were days when Wellcamp had daily Air North and QantasLink return flights to Melbourne and Sydney – they were also the days before Covid-19 struck and the entire world was turned upside down.

It was so blessed convenient to take off from Wellcamp rather than making a four-hour return drive to Brisbane and mortgaging your house to pay for parking.

Those early days have returned, and I urge all The Chronicle readers to get on board.

Fill those planes to capacity, make queues a thing of the future and fly your family and friends here as often as you can.