[Cross-posted at Airplay.] Australia is a long way from anywhere, even from itself. It nearly always takes a long time to get to where you want to go. Historian Geoffrey Blainey famously popularised the idea that this remoteness has shaped Australian history and culture in the title of his 1966 book, The Tyranny of Distance. […]
As of the previous post, 1,000,695 is the number of words I’ve written on Airminded (including 1518 posts and 29 pages, but excluding 2342 comments) since the first post back in July 2005. It sounds like a lot, but it’s only 6150 words per month. Okay, that still sounds like a lot! On to the
As part of a discussion about the worldwide syncronisation of time, Yuval Noah Harari writes: During World War Two, BBC News was broadcast to Nazi-occupied Europe. Each news programme opened with a live broadcast of Big Ben tolling the hour — the magical sound of freedom. Ingenious German physicists found a way to determine the
It is sometimes1 claimed that ballooning was an event at the 1900 Paris Olympics. I don’t think it can have been. But it’s genuinely a bit murky, because this was only the second modern Olympics and the planning process evidently was not as formalised as it later became. The Olympics were held that year as
NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, page 416 is a report from Lieutenant Commander George D. Warren RANR, commanding officer, HMAS Coogee, a civilian coastal steamship requistioned by the Navy for use as a minesweeper. Warren is reporting on the results of his investigation of an aeroplane seen from a naval lookout on the northern end of King
The lost Gotha of New Farm Park is lost in two senses. Firstly, because I’m fairly sure that it no longer exists. Secondly, because I’m quite sure that it never existed. Chris O’Regan pointed out on Twitter that ‘there used to be a captured German plane in New Farm Park’ in Brisbane. This was easy
My article, ‘The militarisation of aerial theatre: air displays and airmindedness in Britain and Australia between the World Wars’, is available on Contempory British History‘s website. It seems like only yesterday that I uploaded the self-archived version — in fact it was only 5 weeks ago! While the formal and final version of the article
The first real air raid on Australia was against Darwin on 19 February 1942. I don’t know when the first fake air raid on Australia was, but there was one against Melbourne on 14 October 1929: An aerial attack was made on Melbourne to-day by a group of seagull [sic] machines, which had been sent
My article, ‘The militarisation of aerial theatre: air displays and airmindedness in Britain and Australia between the World Wars’, has just been accepted for publication in Contemporary British History. It will be part of a special issue edited by Andrekos Varnava and Michael J. K. Walsh on ‘The production of popular culture and its relationship
Manfred von Richthofen is undoubtedly the most famous aviator of the First World War, possibly of all time. But he’s not famous by name, so much as by nickname: he is the Red Baron, a reference to his red aircraft and his aristocratic birth. It instantly evokes images of knights of the sky, grappling together
