In 2016 I contributed a chapter on the 1918 mystery aeroplane panic to Australia and the Great War: Identity, Memory and Mythology, an edited collection published by Melbourne University Press. While I’d already published a peer-reviewed article on the same topic, this was broader in scope as it attempted to provide a transnational narrative and […]
One hundred years ago, less a few days, a police constable named Wright saw two aeroplanes flying over Nyang in the Mallee, in north-western Victoria. There is no longer any such place — it, or at least its station, was renamed Torrita (above) in 1921 — and nor were there any aeroplanes. Or at least,
@TroveAirBot is a Twitter bot which tweets links to random articles about aviation from Trove Newspapers. In its first day or so of operation, it has tweeted about…
The State Library of Queensland identifies this image as ‘R.A.A.F. Mosquito bombers, ca. 1945′; I suspect it’s from a RAAF march and flypast put on for the Third Victory Loan in the centre of Brisbane on 6 April 1945. On that occasion, according to the Courier-Mail, The veteran Lancaster bomber ‘G. for George,’ will lead
In an earlier series of posts I discussed Australia’s first airship, the White Australia, which flew in 1914. It turns out that there was an earlier Australian airship, of a sort: the Airem Scarem. Indeed, according to a 1907 newspaper advertisement it was the ‘First Airship below the line’ (equator, presumably). From the above photo,
It is seventy years since since 24 June 1947, when Kenneth Arnold saw nine crescent-shaped objects flying at high speed past Mt Rainier; in other words, seventy years since the emergence of the UFO phenomenon. Often, when I talk or write about phantom airships, the topic of UFOs comes up, and with good reason. The
Here in Australia, yesterday, the first Sunday in June, was Bomber Command Commemorative Day. The occasion was marked with ceremonies in most state capitals. The major event, at the Australian War Memorial (AWM) in Canberra, spanned the whole weekend and included a flypast by a RAAF Hornet and a wreathlaying ceremony, which remarkably is claimed
Some big news. Today the Australian Research Council (ARC) announced that it is funding Linkage Project LP160101232, ‘Heritage of the air: how aviation transformed Australia’ to the amount of $440,000 over three years, with financial and/or in-kind contributions from Airservices Australia, the National Museum of Australia, the Civil Aviation Historical Society, and the SFO Museum.
I recently learned that Adelaide has a suburb called Hendon. Naturally, I wondered if there was a connection to the Hendon, the most important site for aerial theatre in Britain both before and after the First World War. And the answer is: yes!
In the rather enjoyable Falling Upwards, Richard Holmes spends most of his time discussing the history of ballooning in Britain, France, and the United States. However, he does briefly talk about the first balloon flights in Australia: In 1858 the British balloon the Australian made some startling flights over Melbourne and Sydney. There was a
