February 2022 Outlook Newsletter

DerekB19/02/202222/04/2022

The February 2022 edition of the Outlook / AHSA News has been emailed to members.

This edition can also be read online in the viewer below.

Click here to view fullscreen (opens in a new tab)

1919 Captain Henry Wrigley and Sergeant Arthur William Murphy departed from Point Cook and flew to Cootamundra on 16 November 1919 on the first leg of an aerial survey of a suitable route from Melbourne to Darwin. They were flying in the single-engined Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2e B6183. The flight took 4 hours and 5 minutes, along a route which took them over Broadmeadows, Wallan, Broadford, Mangalore, Euroa, Violet-Town, Benalla, Glenrowan, Wangaratta, Chiltern, Wodonga, Albury, Culcairn, The Rock, Wagga and Junee. This flight was the longest flight which had been made in Australia to that date. Source: Tom Lockley, Wrigley and Murphy: Australia’s First Transcontinental Flight; AHSA (NSW) Inc., 2009.

1920 On 16 November 1920 at the Gresham Hotel in Brisbane, formal papers were signed by Hudson Fysh, Paul McGinness, Fergus McMaster and others establishing the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited with McMaster as chairman. Fergus McMaster, a grazier from Queensland, was a key figure in the establishment of Qantas, providing initial capital and lobbying for both private funding and government subsidies. Hudson Fysh and Paul McGinness flew together with the Australian Flying Corps in the First World War. After the war, they tried to enter the 1919 Great Air Race, chasing the £10,000 prize money offered to the first Australian to complete a flight from Great Britain to Australia. Unfortunately, after their race sponsor died suddenly, the pair were forced to withdraw their entry. Instead, Fysh and McGinness were commissioned by the Defence Department to complete a survey of suitable landing sites for the race throughout the Northern Territory and Queensland. As McGinness and Fysh struggled to complete their work across the difficult terrain and long distances, their idea for an aerial service across the region and Australia began to form. Source: National Museum of Australia

1963 The first of two Mirages shipped to Australia as fully-equipped major assemblies for completion by GAF, A3-3, was flown for the first time by Squadron Leader (later Air Vice-Marshal) Bill Collings at Avalon on 16 November 1963. Government Aircraft Factories (GAF) were the prime contractor for Australian-built Mirages supplied to the RAAF. Source: Aircraft of the RAAF, RAAF History & Heritage/Big Sky Publishing, 2021.