Military aircraft crashes were not uncommon in wartime Queensland, local Police often the first responders. By 1944 Queensland coastal communities had grown accustomed to the daily sight and sound of military aircraft transiting to and from forward bases in Papua New Guinea, and beyond. Monitoring the northbound progress of one such formation on the […]
Author: bauple58
No Survivor
In 2000 a CBS film crew, surrounded by secrecy and security, spent some weeks at North Queensland’s remote Kirrima Station filming the second Survivor series, then the highest-rated television series in the United States. Most likely, they then packed up and returned to the States, oblivious that another American crew had also arrived there fifty-eight […]
Townsville’s first aerodrome
Nothing remains in suburban Annandale to suggest that this quite suburb on the southern banks of the Ross River was once the City of Townsville ‘s only public aerodrome. In November 1938 City Council announced it would be constructing a new aerodrome costing £7,226. Two thousand pounds of this was to be contributed by the Civil Aviation […]
A camoufleur’s art
For more than a century official war artists have helped shape our understanding of Australian military history. Often selected on the basis of their pre-war reputations, the works produced by official war artists such as Sidney Nolan, Russell Drysdale, Arthur Streeton and Albert Tucker have become staple offerings for a nation now locked into a […]
‘never…except by aeroplane’
Like other eminent organisations, Qantas too has its own foundation narrative – concerning two recently demobbed Australian airmen (Hudson Fysh and Paul McGinness) who, in an epic 2,180 km overland journey in a Model T Ford, successfully surveyed the continent’s northern aerial route from Longreach (Qld.) to the Katherine River (N.T. ) railhead in preparation […]
Unplanned
In early June 1944 the RAAF’s No.457 Squadron, one of three Spitfire units recalled from Britain for homeland defence, began exchanging its near-obsolete Mk.V aircraft with more effective Mk.VIIIs. As deliveries of the latter began arriving in the Northen Territory, squadron pilots would ferry equal numbers of the former south for overhaul and re-assignment – […]
Ipswich Railway Workshops
As a consequence of the 1939 British Air Mission to Australia, the state railways in Victorian, New South Wales, and South Australian each became involved in the production of military aircraft and aero engines. Following a visit to Queensland in March 1939 by the Mission’s Technical Member L C Ord, serious consideration was also given […]