CAC Wirraway – Aviation Historical Society of Australia

DerekB30/11/202223/11/2024

Australian aviation history digital archive

In its mission to preserve and promote Australia's aviation heritage, the AHSA hosts the following digital archives. Click on the image to go to...

DerekB27/04/202204/06/2023

The Aircraft Projects of Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation

This new book by author and AHSA member Joe Vella has just been published (April 2022). Joe began writing this book in 1983 when...

DerekB29/09/202027/12/2022

Australian-built Aircraft and the Industry (Vol 2) by Keith Meggs

The latest book released by author Keith Meggs Volume 2 of this encyclopaedic work (containing only one chapter, being chapter 15, spread across two...

DerekB16/09/202027/12/2022

AHSA Monthly Meeting 16 Sep 2020 (Derek Buckmaster: The Wirraway “Newspaper War”)

Derek Buckmaster gave a presentation on The Wirraway "Newspaper War". The AHSA September monthly meeting was held online via Zoom. A recording of the...

Cover - CAC Ceres by Derek Buckmaster

DerekB08/06/202027/12/2022

CAC Ceres – Australia’s Heavyweight Cropduster by Derek Buckmaster

The Ceres agricultural aircraft was produced by Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) in Australia from 1959 to 1963. A total of only 20 airframes were...

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.