It’s been nearly four weeks since I farewelled my friends and left Armidale, which somehow seems both very recent and very distant. Before I left, I’d planned to post some of my favourite photos of the town, but in the press of events didn’t manage to. And after, I found it difficult to decide which […]
This a Boeing (Stearman) Model 75, built in 1941 for use as a primary trainer for the US Army Air Forces. After a postwar career in the US as a cropduster, it was registered in Australia as VH-JLW and is now operated by Fleet Adventures, based at Armidale Regional Airport. And last Friday, as a
In two weeks from today I’ll be leaving Armidale for good, and heading back to Melbourne, my hometown. It’s mostly for excellent personal reasons, but in part it’s also because of the usual early-career academic story of precarious employment. My colleagues at the University of New England have supported me as much they could, but
NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, page 836 is a report by Senior Constable P. J. Connolly regarding ‘an aeroplane flying in a Westerly direction’ seen at 9pm the previous evening at Charlton, in the Mallee region of Victoria, by William Bannon and no less than ‘eight other farmers’, who all saw the machine together: One bright white
NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, page 529 is a statement by Captain T. J. Wilson, master of the SS Koolonga, a merchant vessel plying the Newcastle–Port Pirie route. At 8.15pm on 26 May 1918, Koolonga was off Cape Willoughby, Kangaroo Island, South Australia; Wilson was on the bridge when, ‘Casually looking aloft, he saw a dark square
NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, page 134 is a report by Constable C. Joyes, Victoria Police, about an ‘Aeroplane seen in the vicinity of Dromana‘, a seaside resort town about 70km from Melbourne. Doctor J. G. Weld of Dromana reported to me today that he saw an Aeroplane about 530 am yesterday morning (21st [May 1918]) flying
NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, page 138 is a statement made by Adelaide Twist, a bookkeeper from Macarthur in the Western District of Victoria, to Mounted Constable J. C. Pickett. She states that on 11 May 1918 she and her sister were walking home at about midnight, and Just as we were about to go in our
An interesting confluence of old and new: an Australian advertisement for a steamship passage to Britain to see both royal pageantry and aerial theatre, in the form of the ‘Hendon Air Pageant’, symbolised by aircraft performing aerobatics and trailing smoke: In 1935 His Majesty the King will celebrate the Silver Jubilee of his accession. London
NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, page 842 is a copy of a statement by Joseph Jenkin, a farmer from (or near) Woomelang, witnessed by Mounted Constable J. C. Thornton, Victoria Police. It reads: that at about 8 a.m. on 11th May 1918 I was inside my house gettinh [sic] ready to go to Woomelang when I heard
NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, pages 325 through 327, is a report from Lieutenant K. O. Mackenzie RANB (Royal Australian Naval Brigade), though in fact the bulk of it is his rendering of a statement made by James Aitken, a ‘mail contractor’ from Waratah Bay, regarding an aeroplane he had seen at Cape Liptrap on the Gippsland
