A long time ago I wrote about the idea that the advance of technology had annihilated Britain’s traditional maritime defences. This claim was famously — supposedly — made by Lord Northcliffe, founder and owner of the Daily Mail, after seeing Alberto Santos-Dumont fly in France in 1906: ‘England is no longer an island’.1 It’s so […]
[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.
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
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
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
