This photograph of Australian soldiers was taken during the First World War. It's not particularly unusual: just a group of mates getting together to record a memento, perhaps after a weekend's carousing in the fleshpots of Cairo or Paris.

Mateship is a important concept in Australian culture. The OED defines it as 'The condition of being a mate; companionship, fellowship, comradeship' and notes that it is 'Now chiefly Austral. and N.Z.' The Australian National Dictionary gives several more specifically Australian shades of meaning, from 'An acquaintance; a person engaged in the same activity', to 'One with whom the bonds of close friendship are acknowledged, a "sworn friend"', to 'A mode of address implying equality and goodwill; freq. used to a casual acquaintance and, esp. in recent use [...], ironic'. Suffice it to say that pretty much any bloke can have occasion to call another cobber a mate, whether they are good friends or bitter enemies. (Sheilas are another question, of course.)

Mateship is a positive virtue. As C. E. W. Bean wrote in 1921, in the first volume (page 6) of his official history of Australia in the Great War:

The typical Australian [...] was seldom religious in the sense in which the word is generally used. So far as he held a prevailing creed, it was a romantic one inherited from the gold-miner and the bush-man, of which the chief article was that a man should at all times and at any cost stand by his mate. This was and is the one law which the good Australian must never break. It is bred in the child and stays with him through life.

Mateship also has strong military resonances, as Bean's interest in it might suggest. An Army News article on the unveiling of a war memorial in Papua New Guinea commemorating the Kokoda Track, the site of bitter fighting between Australians and Japanese in 1942, notes that the words courage, mateship, endurance and sacrifice are inscribed on its pillars. It further adds that these are 'words that today's Australian Army has built its foundations on'. So mateship is both an expression of Australia's egalitarian spirit and its martial one, as former Prime Minister John Howard explained in a speech given at Australia House in London in 2003:

The two world wars exacted a terrible price from us -- the full magnitude of that lost potential, of those unlived lives can never be measured. And yet, some of the most admirable aspects of Australia's national character were, if not conceived, then more fully ingrained within us by the searing experiences of those conflicts.

None more so than the concept of mateship -- regarded as a particularly Australian virtue -- a concept that encompasses unconditional acceptance, mutual and self respect, sharing whatever is available no matter how meagre, a concept based on trust and selflessness and absolute interdependence. In combat, men did live and die by its creed. 'Sticking by your mates' was sometimes the only reason for continuing on when all seemed hopeless.

I was moved by an account written by Hugh Clarke, who, like thousands of other Australian and British servicemen, endured years of senseless cruelty as a prisoner of the Japanese after the fall of Singapore. He couldn't recall a single Australian dying alone without someone being there to look after him in some way. That's mateship.

Contemporary Australia takes great pride in its egalitarian attitudes. Mud and fear and enemy fire are no respecters of class, rank or parentage and from both wars, our veterans brought back to Australian society a renewed conviction that an individual's worth should be judged -- not by those things -- but by their own talent, courage and personal virtue.

Howard was particularly fond of the concept of mateship; in 1999 he even tried to get it inserted into the preamble of the Australian constitution. It was in fact one of the sites of conflict in Australia's culture wars of the late 1990s and early 2000s: Marilyn Lake has criticised it as reinforcing white solidarity. She has a point; and it's not like Australia is the only country in the world to value mateship, even if it isn't called that. (Although one of the more charming aspects of the word 'mate' is the way it's quickly picked up and used by new arrivals to these shores.) Gender critiques are even more pointed: while women can and do use the word, and can be mates with men and and with each other, it still has a blokey feel. Idealising mateship as an inherently Australian trait is exclusionary, as Martin Ball has argued for the related concept of the 'Anzac spirit':

The Anzac tradition holds many values for us all to celebrate, but the myth also suppresses parts of Australian history that are difficult to deal with. Anzac is a means of forgetting the origins of Australia. The Aboriginal population is conveniently absent. The convict stain is wiped clean. Postwar immigration is yet to broaden the cultural identity of the population. [...] The problem with the simple patriotism of Anzac is that it runs the risk of making some of us are more Australian than others.

Which brings me back to the photograph at the start of the post. It actually isn't as straightforward as it seems. The men pictured are actually all deserters; and the reason they posed for the photograph was to taunt the military authorities they had escaped from. For it was sent to the Australian Assistant Provost Marshal in Le Havre, along with the following letter:

Sir,
With all due respect we send you this P. C. [post card] as a souvenir trusting that you will keep it as a mark of esteem from those who know you well. At the same time trusting that Nous jamais regardez vous encore [we will never see you again]. Au revoir.
Nous

The deserters -- who were apparently never caught -- are displaying mateship, humour, larrikinism and all those good things which are supposedly part of the Australian essence, but deployed in a way that cuts against the celebration of the Anzac spirit. For whatever reason, these men who had all volunteered for war decided to have nothing more to do with it, and so could be considered to be some of the first war resisters in Australian history.

NB. The photograph comes ultimately from the Australian War Memorial, but I found it in Ashley Ekins, ed., 1918 Year of Victory: The End of the Great War and the Shaping of History (Titirangi and Wollombi: Exisle Publishing, 2010). Ekins' own essay in that book on 'morale, discipline and combat effectiveness' has much to say on this topic, though unfortunately doesn't specifically discuss our ten mates above.

As I noted recently, at least the question of how Bomber Command should be remembered gets discussed in the UK, unlike in Australia. Having said that, Australia and New Zealand both already have Bomber Command memorials. Admittedly, New Zealand's memorial looks like it might originally have been designed by Nigel Tufnel on the back of a paper napkin. Then again, Australia's (much bigger) one was designed by a Kiwi and built in New Zealand. I'm sure this must be meaningful in terms of the longstanding trans-Tasman rivalry but wouldn't venture to guess how exactly!

Thanks to peacay and ErrolC for the tips.

It's Anzac Day once again. On Anzac Day, Australia remembers some things but forgets others. We remember the sacrifices of the original Anzacs at Gallipoli, but forget that it wasn't only Australians who suffered. We remember the many thousands of young Australians who have fought in foreign wars since then, but forget to ask why they were there. We remember that war can bring out the best in people, but forget that it can also bring out the worst.

One thing we tend to forget is Australia's part in the bombing of Europe in the Second World War. There are a few memorials and exhibits, but when we think of Anzacs we usually think of slouch hats, not flying helmets.

Eight Royal Australian Air Force squadrons served with RAF Bomber Command at various times: 455, 458, 460 (members of which can be seen above arranged in front of -- and on top of -- one of their Lancasters), 462, 463, 464, 466 and 467. Many other Australians flew with RAF heavy bomber squadrons, just as many non-Australians did with the RAAF squadrons. (Often outnumbering the Australians, in fact: when 462 was formed, only one of its aircrew was Australian.) In total, around 10,000 Australians served in Bomber Command during the war, at stations like this one at Waddington, home to 463 and 467 Squadrons for the war's last eighteen months.

The butcher's bill was enormous: of those 10,000, nearly 3500 Australian airmen were killed, out of 10,500 RAAF deaths for the whole war and 39,300 for all three services. That is, one in eleven of Australian service personnel who died in the war did so while serving in Bomber Command. One in three of those Australians who fought their war in the night skies above Europe never came home again. Two hundred men from 463 Squadron were killed in the eight months before D-Day, 130 per cent of its establishment strength.

Above is a RAAF Lancaster of 463 Squadron over Normandy in July 1944. One of its engines is on fire and the crew are about to bail out; two were killed and three taken prisoner.

But to focus on just the Australian casualties would also be a form of forgetting. They didn't join Bomber Command to die but to fight. RAAF aircrew and squadrons played an important role in many of Bomber Command's most famous operations: busting the Ruhr dams, the Amiens prison raid, sinking the Tirpitz. But they also took part in all of the RAF's big assaults on German cities: Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, and so many others.

Above is one of 460 Squadron's Lancasters bombing Freiburg on the night of 27 November 1944, part of a raid which killed about 3000 civilians.

This is Dresden on 14 February 1945, the day after the Allies began their attack on the city. Three RAAF squadrons -- 460, 463 and 467 -- helped to create the firestorm in which 25,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed. At a minimum, the Combined Bomber Offensive killed at least 300,000 civilians in Germany, and many thousands more in occupied Europe. Some proportion of those were killed by Australians -- under British command, true, but with the acquiescence and approval of the Australian government and the great majority of its people. Unlike in Britain, the moral questions surrounding the area bombing of cities in the Second World War have never been controversial in Australia, or even seriously questioned, not at the time, not afterwards. They are glossed over. And when our bomber boys are remembered, just what they bombed is not.

I'm not against Anzac Day at all. It's good to have a day to remember those who fought and those who died for us. But Anzac Day allows us to talk about some things to do with Australia's wars, and not about others. If we remember the great and heroic deeds done in our name, we should also remember those things which are perhaps less comfortable to dwell on. And ask why they happened, and whether they could happen again.

Image sources: Australian War Memorial P03127.002, SUK13470, SUK13775, UK2288, UK2416.

Further reading: Alan Stephens, The Royal Australian Air Force (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001), chapter 5.

The RAAF Museum, round 2. This time there was less time spent outside looking at aeroplanes in the air (above, see below) and more inside looking at aeroplanes (and other things) on the ground (see below).

A precious relic: a piece of the true crossfabric from the Red Baron's Fokker Dr.I. Why is it here? Because it was 'souvenired' (as the display puts it) by members of No. 3 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps (AFC). Richthofen was shot down in No. 3 Squadron's sector, probably by Australian gunners, and they had responsibility for his body and aircraft.

The AFC was the Australian army's first aviation unit, founded in 1912 at Point Cook -- the same year as the RFC, incidentally. (Technically, only the Central Flying School was established in 1912; references to the AFC don't appear until 1914. But what is a flying school without a flying corps?) It fielded four squadrons in Palestine and France. One of these was No. 4 Squadron, which was also part of the British forces occupying Germany until March 1919. This is part of an Australian flag (i.e. the British part), created to commemorate the end of the First World War and No 4 Squadron's role in it. Supposedly it was 'the first Australian flag flown into Germany 10.45am 7 12 18' (ie 7 December 1918).

Another Australian flag from 1919. This one is a red ensign (with Australia and the British Isles superimposed -- note the still-united Ireland), which at the time was used almost as widely as the more familiar national ensign. It was presented to Ross Smith when he, along with his brother Keith, Jim Bennett and Wally Shears landed at Darwin and became the first to fly from London to Australia in less than 30 days. A nice little earner as it netted them £10,000 from the Australian government. All of them were RFC/AFC/RAF veterans and they flew a Vimy, the same type which bridged the Atlantic the same year.

Something I don't think I've ever seen before: window!

It may seem odd, given their great distance from anywhere, but Australians had to undertake air raid precautions just as people living closer to the front line did. Well, not quite the same: Melbourne had a brownout instead of a blackout, for example. I haven't read this book, but most ARP advice in Australia was derived from British theory and experience, and this one was probably much the same.

The turret from a Bristol Beaufort, sporting twin .303 Browning machine-guns. You can just make out the seat in the middle of the hydraulics, which gives an idea of just how cramped it was for the unfortunate gunner.

A crumpled metal case belong to Sister Marie Craig, a RAAF nurse. She, along with 29 other people, was killed on 18 September 1945 when the RAAF Dakota they were flying on crashed in West Papua.

A flag taken from the Viet Cong near Long Tan, the scene of a hard-fought Australian victory during the Vietnam war. RAAF helicopters resupplied Australian troops from the air during the battle.

This is one of those helicopters, a Bell Iroquois. The RAAF operated helicopters in tactical support of the Army until 1986, a job the Army now does itself.

And with that we've smoothly segued into the static aircraft displays. One of the first things you see is this Macchi MB-326. The Macchis were used for advanced training, and were also very familiar as the type flown by the Roulettes, the RAAF's aerobatic team, for nearly two decades.

A Link Trainer, an early form of flight simulator, used in the 1930s and 1940s. Nothing terribly special about that, lots of museums have them ...

... but as JDK pointed out, the accompanying control desk for the instructor is a lot rarer. The instrument panel of the Link was duplicated in front of the instructor, and a mechanical 'crab' marked the progress of the pilot's simulated flight on a map.

The RAAF's first dedicated trainer was the Maurice Farman Shorthorn. This particular aircraft was purchased in 1917 and was only in air force service for two years. A civilian pilot used it for joyflights into the 1930s; the remains were donated to the RAAF Museum in 1981 and eventually restored to the splendid state it is in today. Which raises the question of whether it is actually appropriate to identify this object with the machine the RAAF bought in 1917? Only 30% of its components are original, meaning that 70% are not (i.e sourced from another aircraft or scratch-built). Obviously we'd like to believe that vintage aircraft are the 'real' thing, but they're always reconstructions to a greater or lesser extent.

Flying Vampires, the Telstars were the predecessors of the Roulettes. Such a 1960s name.

There's no doubt about the authenticity of this Avro 504K: it's all replica. But a very nice one.

A splendid example of the Supermarine Walrus, a ubiquitous amphibian of the late 1930s and 1940s. This one (okay, some of this one ... it is just easier to drop the qualifiers) is in the colours it had during an Australian Antarctic expedition in 1947. It was wrecked on Heard Island after only one flight, and not recovered until 1980.

The Walrus was in fact designed in response to a RAAF specification, for catapult launch from Royal Australian Navy cruisers. The British and Canadian navies liked them too, though they ended being used more for search and rescue than gunnery spotting, the original purpose. A pretty rugged aeroplane, it could supposedly do outside loops (though probably not something you'd want to try if it had been shipping water!)

Some handy hints for the Walrus operator.

A Vampire in bumblebee colours, used as a target tug.

An example of the kind of target it would have towed, incomplete with bullet holes.

The Dassault Mirage III, the RAAF's interceptor from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. (When I say 'the', there was more than one, okay? Don't be so literal-minded. Sheesh.) It was the main type operating by the RAAF when I was growing up -- the Hornet which replaced it still seems new to me.

A Douglas Boston bomber, also known as the Havoc. The last remaining Boston III, it's looking pretty good for something which spent half a century rusting away. It crashed on landing at Goodenough Island, near Papua New Guinea, on 12 December 1943.

Three times a week, the RAAF Museum holds a flying display, where one of its vintage aircraft gets out of the hangar and into the sky. This makes it fairly unusual among aviation museums; running these things is not cheap. On the day that JDK and I were there, we and the other visitors were treated to some tumbles and turns from a CAC Mustang flown by an airline pilot on his day off. I'm grateful for his sacrifice!

It could be said that putting its artifacts at risk like this is somewhat at odds with a museum's primary mission, to preserve the heritage of [whatever] for future generations. Even the best maintained and piloted aeroplanes have accidents, and it would be a terrible shame if one of these machines were destroyed in such a way (not to mention the risk to the pilot). Of course, the Museum is aware of this, and has a policy that it will only fly aircraft where it has more than one example: one flying and one spare, in effect. But it's also worth remembering that technology is meant to be used. A static display in a museum can only tell people so much. Showing them how the machine works -- and, too, the acts of restoring it, maintaining it, and flying it -- aids in understanding it in a fuller context. Of course that can only be taken so far: it probably wouldn't be a good idea to load up the Mustang with rockets and take it on strafing runs. But it's a step.

And speaking of heritage, behind the taxiing Mustang above can be seen some of Point Cook's original hangars and buildings, the oldest dating back to 1914. In fact, this may be the most complete First World War-era military aerodrome anywhere in the world, an amazing survival. But they are not open to visitors, they are not being used and they are not being maintained. The RAAF Museum (unlike its British counterpart) is part of the air force it represents. This means it has a fairly secure budget and access to resources an independent museum might not other have. But it also means that, as part of the military, it is constrained about seeking funding from outside sources and can't just do as it likes with government property (Point Cook is actually still part of an air force base, RAAF Williams). The buildings are heritage listed, but all this means is that they can't be pulled down or modified without planning authority approval first. Obviously the RAAF has other priorities when it comes to spending money, but it's a crying shame that more isn't being done with these priceless buildings.

That's enough ranting for now! Here's another part of the museum which is rarely seen, one of the workshops. Closest to the camera is the some of the wood from a wooden wonder: the nose of a de Havilland Mosquito undergoing restoration. In the background is a very interesting project, a replica of a Bristol Boxkite, the very first Australian military aeroplane. The aim is to get this in the air by 2014, the centenary of the first flight in Australian service, and it looks like it's well on the way to meeting the deadline. I had an interesting chat with the guys putting it together, and resisted the urge to ask how quickly they'd be able to scale up production in case the JSF is delayed.

(Thanks to JDK for this picture and the Mustang at the top of the post!)

Last hangar of the day, Hangar 180. It is actually just a hangar with the aircraft lined up inside; you can't get up close to them, but it's an economical way of putting them where people can see them, instead of storing them. The white object in the middle here is a GAF Jindivik target drone, which was developed by Australia in the late 1940s to help with Britain's missile development programmes. Quite a successful machine, it first flew in 1952 and was still in use in the 1980s, but it didn't lead to any long term Australian expertise in drone technology: today we buy ours from the United States.

Behind is a Hawker Demon, a CAC Sabre and the fuselage of a Consolidated PBY Catalina.

This is a rare bird indeed, a GAF Pika, the manned prototype of the Jindivik. Only two were built.

A Westland Wapiti. These general purpose aircraft first flew in 1928, and served widely with Commonwealth air forces. If you wanted to bomb subject peoples in the outer reaches of Empire, this is what you'd use.

Update: The preceding paragraph is all very interesting but, as JDK has pointed out, it's actually an Avro Cadet, which looks somewhat similar, but came a bit later and was a trainer rather than a front-line aircraft. Let that be a lesson to anyone who believes everything I write!

A Sikorsky Dragonfly, one of the first practical helicopters (first flight 1943). It must have looked so ungainly next to, well, just about anything else flying. I think the concept has been proved by now, though.

Let's end here with a Boomerang. Thanks again to JDK for providing carlift and expert commentary!

A few weeks ago I went along to the biennial RAAF Museum Pageant. The RAAF is, of course, the Royal Australian Air Force, and the RAAF Museum is at Point Cook, on the outskirts of Melbourne. Despite being relatively nearby I've never been, so when fellow aviation blogger JDK (who volunteers at the Museum) suggested the Pageant would be worth going along to I took his advice. And it was good advice too!

The Pageant is an air show, and it would have been a good idea if I'd got there in time to see the whole flying display. But on the long trudge (buses? in the outer suburbs? whatever for?) from the aptly-named Aircraft railway station (not apt because of Point Cook but because of another RAAF base, Laverton) I did at least manage to glimpse some of the earlier flights (such as this Lockheed Hudson -- on which, more below).

This Douglas DC-3 is a familiar sight in Melbourne skies, as it is used for scenic flights. Something it apparently couldn't do if it were in the UK since it would be too difficult to comply with safety regulations. Their loss, our gain.

The Museum's flying replica Sopwith Pup.

Some North American Harvards, a long way from North America!

The Hudson on the ground. It's the largest Second World War bomber still flying in Australia.

The Hudson's turret. Thanks to JDK, I was able to sit in the driver's seat. The Hudson was effectively a militarised variant of the Lockheed Super Electra, a civilian airliner. As such it should have been a very capable bomber, if those who worried about convertibility were to be believed. But it wasn't, particularly (whacking a great big turret on it probably didn't help its aerodynamic qualities). Having said that, they had their uses: a RAAF Hudson was the first Allied aircraft to strike back at the Japanese in 1941, setting a troopship on fire off Malaya an hour before Pearl Harbor was attacked.

A familiar shape. It's a Supermarine Spitfire Mk VIII which belongs to the Temora Aviation Museum.

I found that my camera wasn't really up to the job of shooting the flying display. I'd just about gotten away with it at Old Warden, but here the aeroplanes tended to be further away (so harder to find without a viewfinder) and faster (so difficult to capture when they were close). So most of the flying pics I have are sadly uninspired.

A Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk. Much of it spent nearly half a century as a wreck on Vanuatu before being restored to flightworthy status.

This is not a North American F-86 Sabre leading a North American P-51 Mustang and a Spitfire; it's a CAC Sabre leading a CAC Mustang and a Spitfire. The Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation, an Australian aircraft company, built Australian versions of both the Sabre and the Mustang. The Sabre was only restored to flying condition last September, the only flightworthy example of the Australian version still around.

Another CAC Mustang, this one privately-owned.

This Pilatus PC-21 gave the most impressive aerobatic display of the day. A very powerful little machine.

A new-build Yakolev Yak-9.

Yet another North American machine, a T-28 Trojan, alongside yet another CAC machine, a Boomerang.

The Mk IX taxiing. The shark's teeth nose art is rare, but historical: No. 457 Squadron RAAF, the 'Grey Nurse Squadron', flew its Spitfires looking like this in the later stages of the war against Japan.

The Roulettes, the RAAF's precision flying team, doing their thing. They're flying Pilatus PC-9s, the RAAF's basic trainer.

Visitors to the Pageant got to see a preview of the Museum's new Strike Hanger, which will showcase the RAF's postwar bomberstrike aircraft.

Here is a GAF Canberra. GAF was the (Australian) Government Aircraft Factory at Fisherman's Bend in Melbourne, and its variant of the Canberra had extra fuel tanks to extend its range. RAAF Canberras saw action in the Malayan Emergency and Vietnam.

Apparently the name was chosen because Australia was the first export customer, but the British had a somewhat odd habit of naming their bombers after provincial and imperial towns and cities; I think the Canberra was the last example of that.

But despite the name, the RAAF stopped using Canberras in 1982; the RAF kept them on until 2006, 57 years after its first flight!

The Canberra's successor in the strike role was the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II. The RAAF only had them for a few years in the early 1970s, leasing them while waiting for the F-111 to come along. (The same thing is happening now that the F-111s are being retired: the Joint Strike Fighter won't be ready for a while, so the RAAF is leasing some Super Hornets in the interim. Both the F-111 and, more or less, the JSF were ordered before they even flew.)

The Phantom's appendix. All Phantoms have folding wings, a vestige of its original design as a carrier-borne fighter which has not much use on land.

The aforementioned General Dynamics F-111.

AKA the Pig.

The F-111 is being retired from the RAAF's inventory this year, which makes it a suitable museum piece.

F-111s never saw combat in Australian service (although I suppose there is still time!) But they were used to spy on a Tasmanian dam project in 1983 and to sink a North Korean freighter in 2006.

Inside the bomb bay are the signatures of the last groundcrew to service the aircraft.

A last shot, of the Kittyhawk.

There was a lot more to see, and indeed I was back a week later when all the crowds had gone! More on that in another post.

To Whom It May Concern.

Diggers' Rest,
near Melbourne,
18/3/1910.

We, the undersigned, do hereby testify to the fact that on the above date, about 8 o'clock a.m., we witnessed Harry Houdini in a Voisin biplane (a French heavier than air machine) make three successful flights of from 1min. to 3½min., the last flight being of the lastmentioned duration. In his various flights he reached an altitude of 100ft., and in his longest flight traversed a distance of more than two miles.

(Signed)
HAROLD J. JAGELMAN, Kogarah, N.S.W.
ROBERT HOWIE, Diggers' Rest.
A. BRASSAC, Paris.
WALTER P. SMITH, 4 Blackwood-street, North Melbourne.
F. ENFIELD SMITHELLS, care of Union Bank, Melbourne.
RALPH C. BANKS, Melbourne, motor garage.
FRANZ KUKOL, Vienna.
V. L. VICKERY, Highgate, England.
JOHN H. JORDAN, 11 Francis-street, Ascot-vale.

Houdini was on a tour of Australia, and the flight was undertaken to generate publicity for him. But it wasn't undertaken on a whim: he bought and flew the Voisin in Germany the previous year, and had it crated up and shipped out to Australia.

This film shows Houdini on a later flight over Sydney, probably from Rosehill Racecourse. (My first YouTube upload; I took it from Hargrave.) After leaving Australia, he never flew again.

As with any aviation first, there are other claimants for the title of first to fly in Australia. Colin Defries, for example, demonstrated powered flight, but not controlled flight, in Sydney on 9 December 1909: he got up into the air but crashed it. Defries was British; the first Australian to fly (and in an Australian-built aeroplane too) was John Robertson Duigan, later in 1910. David Crotty, a curator at Museum Victoria, discusses some of these issues here; Scienceworks has just opened a new exhibition featuring some artifacts from Defries' aeroplane (its engine was dumped into Port Phillip Bay to avoid import duty!)

I tend to favour Houdini's claims, but that may be because Diggers Rest was my first hometown :) Celebrations are being held there this week -- the Festival of Flight -- including flying displays and (appropriately) magic shows.

The war artist is Eric Thake (1904-1982), and the family is mine, although only in the extended sense: Thake's grandparents, John and Sarah (née Prentice) Thake, were my great-great-grandparents. It was only a couple of weeks ago that my mother found this out. My paternal grandmother (who was born a Thake) did maintain that he was related, but how exactly was unclear, and his middle-class life in suburban Melbourne seemed a long way from her family on the Murray. But she was right!

Thake is a moderately important Australian artist: as one indicator of this, the Art Gallery of New South Wales holds 131 of his works in its collection. He worked in a number of different media: watercolours, photography, sketches, linocuts. In later years he even designed stamps, including a series to mark the anniversary of the first flight from Britain to Australia. He started out as a commercial artist in the 1920s, but also began to make a name for himself in less practical forms of art, including surrealism: in 1940, the director of the National Gallery of Victoria denounced Thake for being 'too modern'! Perhaps his modernity was why the Royal Australian Air Force selected him in 1944 to be an official war artist. He had already shown some interest in the technology of flight, for example in this surrealist work entitled Archaeopteryx (1941):

Thake's paintings for the RAAF certainly betray an interest in the hardware of war. My favourite is the one at the top of the post, Kamiri Searchlight (1945), which he painted at Noemfoor Island off Western New Guinea. The searchlight belonged to an American anti-aircraft battery, sited on a former Japanese airfield.

This one is called Liberator's Face (1945).

It's not clear to me if Wrecked House, Darwin (1945) shows a ruin left after one of Darwin's air raids; it might simply be a derelict house. But it was understood at the time as depicting bomb damage. I don't think the Japanese were responsible for the rude drawings, though.

Thake is perhaps best remembered today for the wry series of linocuts he produced for his Christmas cards every year from 1941, and this is probably the best-known, An Opera House in every home (1972). A few years ago, I was lucky to see a retrospective exhibition of his Christmas card images (it was literally held across the road from my workplace) and more than his war work I fancy they gave me a keen insight into his personality, or at least the humorous side of it.

Here's the man himself, working on a portrait of Lieutenant-General Yamada, the captured commander of 48th Division on Timor.

It's the 75th anniversary of the MacRobertson Trophy Air Race. More specifically, it's the 75th anniversary of the day the race was won, 23 October 1934. The winners were C. W. A. Scott and Tom Campbell Black of Britain, who took just two days and twenty-three hours to cover the 18200 km from London to Melbourne. They flew in a de Havilland DH.88 Comet, named Grosvenor House, a beautifully streamlined twin-engined monoplane which was specially designed for the race. So a triumph for British aviation, then?

Well, if you've been reading the debate on a recent comments thread, you'll know it's not quite as straightforward as that. Scott and Black did win, but in second place was the Dutch-owned, US-designed Uiver, flown by K. D. Parmentier and J. J. Moll. True, it took 19 hours longer to fly the race route (albeit with an emergency stop at Albury, on the NSW-Victoria border). But that's pretty impressive when you consider that Uiver was a Douglas DC-2 -- an airliner, not designed for speed but for economy and payload. It even carried passengers for most of the race, and made many more stops than required by the race rules, as it was also blazing an air route for KLM. The Dutch actually won the race on handicap. Third was another American airliner, a Boeing 247D. The fastest British equivalent in the race was a New Zealand-owned DH.89 Dragon Rapide, which took nearly two weeks to complete the course.

Present-day arguments aside, what did contemporaries think of the result? The British (and Australian) press mostly celebrated Scott and Black's win. For example, the Melbourne Argus had this to say:

Where the pioneers walked, Scott and Black ran. Perhaps the finest evaluation of their victory is found in the lot of the other competitors. Some of them were still in Europe when Darwin revealed itself like the Promised Land to the weary victors. Even the mammoth Dutch airliner, flown by the light-hearted Parmentier, was hundreds of miles behind. Flying-Officer Gilman and Mr. J. K. C. Baines had crashed to a burning death. The nearest Americans were a continent away. The whole world opened its eyes in amazement.

In a representative International race a British aeroplane, flown by British aviators, has triumphed. That is a selfish reason for jubilation, and the result cannot fail to enhance the prestige of Britain in the air.¹

But the Argus was not blind to the significance of the Uiver's performance:

The others, however, flew bravely and well. They are all in the vanguard of the new age, Parmentier perhaps most of all. For he rode the skies in this great race like the unruffled pilot of a tourist airliner, allowing his passengers, between chicken sandwiches, to watch three continents unfolding beneath them. Could any more striking contrast be imagined than the weariness and exhaustion of Scott and Black and the pleasant excitement of Parmentier's passengers, who flew in the world's most notable race as tourists? All these men and women have been true to a fine tradition; and, although two lives already have been lost, a great advance has been made, lifting the horizon to an astonishing future.²

Australians, being so used to isolation, might be expected to celebrate its erosion (the Argus pointed out that only seventy years earlier, it could take up to a hundred days to get from London to Melbourne; even as recently as 1931 the best time by air was 10 days). Whether it was thanks to British technology or not was secondary. But back in Britain, the usual self-congratulations in the press stood against more pessimistic comments. Even before the race, the Daily Mail thought the Comets (two others flew in the race) were marvels, but added that

The unfortunate fact, however, is that the aeroplanes of the Royal Air Force are a whole generation behind them in design and speed.³

J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon, a Conservative MP who was the first person to get a British pilot's licence (in 1910) claimed that the 'England-Australia race has opened the eyes of the world [...] to the lamentable position, from the technical point of view, of English aviation'⁴.

It is true, of course, to say that we won the race, but we won it with a machine that was built especially for the race, and although it redounds to the credit of the De Havilland Company that they not only won the race, but also designed and produced the machine in seven months, they would, I think, be the first to admit that it was a machine built for one particular job, and that, in a broad way, it was a speed copy of a commercial American aircraft.⁵

He pointed to two specific innovations becoming common in the United States, but virtually unknown in Britain: retractable undercarriages and variable pitch propellers (which the Comet did actually have).

As a final, somewhat-elliptical example, consider the cartoon at the top of the race, from the Saturday Review (15 December 1934, 514). The Saturday Review also lamented Britain's performance in the MacRobertson air race, but this is another air race, one in which Britain is very definitely lagging: the race for airpower. Britain's air force is shown to be behind those of Germany, the Soviet Union, France, Italy, the United States and Japan. And this was a race which had to be won ...

A note on 'MacRobertson': there's no such name, as far as I know. It was the nickname of Macpherson Robertson, a Melbourne confectionery king, and the name of his company. Aside from giving Australia the Freddo Frog and the Cherry Ripe, he also gave generously to support Melbourne's centenary celebrations in 1934. The air race was part of these celebrations: the first prize was £10,000. He also has a chunk of Antarctica named after him. But in his home town about the only trace of MacRobertson's name is a high school for girls, which is popularly known as Mac.Rob. Sad to say, the great air race itself seems to have been forgotten today in Melbourne, except here at Airminded and at Vintage Aeroplane Writer, JDK's new blog.

1. Argus, 24 October 1934, 6.
2. Ibid.
3. Daily Mail, 2 October 1934; in Arming in the Air: The Daily Mail Campaign (London: Associated Newspapers, 1936
4. J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon, 'British aviation: a lament', Empire Review, December 1934, 328.
5. Ibid.

I recently attended a function in the Gryphon Gallery of the 1888 Building at the University of Melbourne, where there's a local war memorial I missed out on when I last wrote on the topic. It was dedicated in 1920 in what was then the Teachers' College, and takes the form of three stained glass windows. The central window -- seen above and below -- depicts an Australian soldier, rifle to the ready, bayonet fixed. He represents all those former students and staff members who served in the Australian Imperial Force (including at least two women).

The inscription at the bottom reads

IN HONOUR OF THOSE
OF THIS COLLEGE WHO
ANSWERED THE CALL OF COUNTRY
IN THE GREAT WAR.

The one at the top is the college Latin motto, from Horace,

NON OMNIS MORIAR

which gives the title of this post.

The windows on either side give the names of nearly all who served (a pamphlet put out by the Ian Potter Museum of Art, clearly the result of a considerable amount of historical spadework, lists some more). Those who died have a section devoted to them at the very top.

I was intrigued by one of the names, S. J. Tong Way. It stands out among all the other, Anglo-Saxon names. I thought perhaps he was descended from one of the Chinese immigrants who came to Victoria during the gold rush era. And it seems that's the case. A Samuel Tong Way is mentioned, along with his brother Hedley, on an Australian government website as an example of a Chinese Australian who joined up, in his case in the Signal Corps. But despite being an Australian citizen, he wasn't allowed to do so until after 1916, when China joined the Allies. Tong Way (or Tongway) graduated in March 1917 with a Diploma of Education, and after the war became a primary school teacher (in 1935 he appealed against a non-promotion). He served again in the Second World War as an 'instructor', and then took part in returned servicemen activities. After that I lose track of him.

And here's a picture of Private Tong Way, from another part of the memorial which has become detached from the windows shown above, a pair of tablets with ceramic portraits of the college's veterans (now in the Graduate Student Association foyer, in the west wing of the 1888 Building). This is apparently a quite unusual form of memorial, and I'm glad the tablets have been rescued from the storeroom in which they languished for several decades. The windows were also covered up for a while but have also been restored to their former glory. They're well worth a visit though you should check with the Melbourne School of Graduate Research in advance.

While walking home tonight I saw something unexpected.

A tethered balloon hanging in the twilight sky.

I happened to have my new camera with me.

So I took a few shots.

Nothing too exciting, just an advertising/aerial photography balloon (actually, I think an airship sans engines) on a demonstration flight. But a nice airminded surprise nonetheless.