Adventurer circumnavigating Australia using just his trusty seaplane
Flight technology has come a long way in the past century, but if there's one thing pilots definitely still have no control over - it's the weather.
That's what adventurer Michael Smith found when he embarked on a mammoth mission to circumnavigate Australia using just his trusty seaplane.
It's been 100 years since Air Force pilots first made aviation history with the same trip, taking to the skies to outline Australia and survey for sites to build new runways across the country that are still used today.
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Michael Smith is currently holed up in Cooktown waiting for the weather to clear. Today
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And when Aussie entrepreneur and fellow pilot Dick Smith approached Michael with the idea to do it himself to mark the occasion -but in just 50 days, he couldn't resist.
"Five years ago I was actually retracing the first flight from England to Australia in this plane, for that hundredth anniversary and I got an email from Dick Smith saying 'the first circumnavigation of Australia is approaching, I hope you're getting ready for that as well,'" Michael told Today.
"And Dick's one of my childhood heroes, so of course, I took notice."
Michael said the biggest problem the Air Force pilots faced when they did the same trip back in 1924 was bad weather.
And funnily enough - he is currently idle in Cooktown, Far North Queensland, while he waits for some low cloud and an unpredictable forecast to clear up.
If Michael was completing the flight in a bigger plane, he'd have the option of flying above the clouds to stick to his schedule and avoid the low visibility.
Smith is looking to circumnavigate Australia in his seaplane to mark the 100th anniversary of the Air Force first completing the same trip. Today
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But he said that would take away the fun of doing it in a seaplane.
"Despite this weather coming out of Melbourne, overall the trip's just been a joy," he said.
"And the advantage of being in a seaplane is I can land on water or on land, so if there is weather coming, it always gives you plenty of options with all the rivers and lakes around."
See the full chat with Michael in the video above
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