This is the story of Tillair and its subsidiaries, plus the extraordinary young pilots and support staff who went the extra mile to provide one of the Northern Territory's most necessary services. In less than ten years this business grew to a fleet of 45 aircraft. For a time it was the southern hemisphere's largest privately owned airline. Drawing on interviews with founder John Tilley, as well as dozens of staff, family and historical evidence, some of the tales in this account have been retold so often that the specifics were blurring with time. But logbooks(seldom) lie, and this story sets down for the first time the lively history of one of Australia's last frontier training grounds for pilots in the days before SatNav.