French FoxbatPilot subscriber Ferdinand Colonna-Cesari responded to my ‘Vive La France‘ post with a link to some photos of his Aeroprakt A22 aircraft based at Montélimar in France. I have never visited, but this looks like a wonderfully French picturesque medieval town in south eastern France, originally built in Roman times and dominated by a castle.

An interesting link for Australians is that Montélimar – apart from being the world nougat capital – was the birthplace of navigator Louis-Claude de Freycinet, who, along with his brother, Louis-Henri de Freycinet, joined the French navy in 1800 and sailed all the way to Australia, re-visiting many of the places originally explored by Englishman Matthew Flinders. The Freycinet brothers returned to France and published their map of the Australian coastline in 1811 – at least 3 years before Flinders managed to do the same, so there is some ‘discussion’ as to who first ‘discovered’ what parts of Australia…

There are several places in Australia named after Freycinet: the Freycinet Peninsula, a wonderfully scenic part of the eastern Tasmanian coast, including Wineglass Bay; the Freycinet Estuary in south Western Australia (WA) and Cape Freycinet, further up the WA coast.

Finally, if you want a more obscure connection with Australia, have a look at Ferdinand’s aircraft registration – F-JUOZ.

So what initially looks like a simple link to a few photos of an aeroplane, turns out to be a serendipitous couple of co-incidences which brightened my Sunday morning! Thank you, Ferdinand.