About Us :
Blue Skies Ballooning is owned and operated by Marlon Hodges and partner Julie Hodges-Campbell.
We operate under CASA’s approval with Air Operators Certificate CASA.TAAOC.0364.
Marlon is actively involved in the day-to-day business of Blue Skies, as Operations Manager and Chief Pilot, while Julie manages to work admin around her antiques and collectibles business. The Hodges-Campbell residence is a very busy household indeed!
Marlon caught the aviation bug early in life while his dad was working in airfield construction in Northern NSW. He remembers hanging over the boundary fences watching strange and noisy aircraft take off and land for hours. Flying training in an old Piper soon followed.
Many years later while working as a tour guide in Sydney he was introduced to hot air ballooning, helping out as ground crew. Flying training soon followed, and a Commercial Balloon License was obtained in 1988. A request to put together a ballooning operation in the Yarra Valley in 1990 bought him south for a year or so, then off to the Gold Coast to do more of the same!
The following years saw flying in Alice Springs, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Echuca, Melbourne, and regular returns to the Yarra Valley and more recently North of the Murray allowing visitors to experience the Rutherglen Wine Region.
Marlon is passionate about flying balloons, and flying safety, and reckons that flying balloons over wine country on a perfect morning is about as good as it gets!
Julie joined the ballooning life as ground crew, bookings, office admin (tidying up after Marlon), and catering. Julie’s passion is antiques, and her business now has outlets in historic Yarra Glen and at Maling Road in Surrey Hills.
For more info call us on 03 8418 3187
56 Delta Road, Greensborough Vic 3088
ABN: 15 005 204 428
Download our Yarra Valley flights brochure (PDF)