Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men (36 page)

Though born eighty-seven years earlier, Alexander Kennedy, one of the first investors in the company, was always up for a new experience, and was champing at the bit to get under way and…

And Qantas apologises for this small delay.

After the plane flown the day before failed to generate enough revs in its engine to take off, everything, including Kennedy, had to be transferred into a second plane. Fortunately, Kennedy’s baggage was not lost in the process. And in fact, as they took off, half an hour later, Kennedy—resplendent in his aviation cap and goggles and warm coat which he wore despite the hot day, to protect him when they got to the cold awaiting them at 5000 feet—shouted out, ‘Be damned to the doubters!’
¹⁰

As a young man, Kennedy had travelled from Longreach to Cloncurry in a bullock wagon, a journey that had taken him eight months. That had been in 1869. This time, over fifty years later, the journey in a Qantas plane took him just four hours and thirty-five minutes, including stops at Winton and McKinlay along the way! McGinness then flew back to Charleville with the company’s first female passenger, Miss Ivy McLean. Qantas was now properly launched and the previous estimation that there would be a demand for their services proved correct.

As well as flying passengers on regular flights, Qantas continued to take people up on joyrides, make deliveries of urgent supplies and do anything legal that would turn a pound. This involved everything from delivering fresh fruit and vegies to outlying stations willing to pay for the privilege, to taking doctors on SOS missions, to hunting wild turkeys from the sky. Even, on one famous occasion, tracking down a car thief who had stolen a station owner’s vehicle before heading off down the one road in that entire part of the country and thinking he was totally safe from apprehension, as he had a three-hour start on his pursuers.

On another occasion, in a legal case, the judge, the plaintiff, the defendant and two legal counsellors travelled together in a Qantas plane to get to the regional courthouse where the case was to be heard. For two bob a pop, Fysh even ran a little service for lonely and lovelorn blokes, dropping gifts ‘neath parachutes with notes attached addressed to the objects of their affection on outback stations! All up, the airline’s local renown was growing to the point that when a particular minister was taking a Bible study class at Winton State High School and asked, ‘Who was Pontius Pilate?’ one of the schoolboys was quick with his answer.

‘He’s the cove who drives the Qantas mail plane.’
¹¹

If that was the case, then it was also fair to say that he was very busy. Journalist Norman Ellison documented that Qantas pilots did everything—from making tickets, to handing them out, loading baggage, unloading it, making sandwiches and filling thermos flasks. Fixing planes, arranging accommodation, even selling shares in the company…
¹²

In the hot dusty conditions, it was not always easy to keep the planes in the air, but the company mechanic, and investor, Arthur Baird, was a superb operator who was able to maintain the growing fleet
and
make modifications to improve performance.

From Chilla, there continued to be signs that this young woman Thelma was working his spirit, as clearly the relationship was beginning to heat up…For example, just a month after his first mention of her, at the end of a very chatty letter about this and that and nothing much in particular, Chilla got to the PS, which he wrote down in the margin of the page: ‘P.S. Thelma Corboy (Mrs. McKenna’s daughter,) heap nice girl. Am very interested…’
¹³

And a month later, again, on the last day of 1922…‘Next week I go out to Meentheena again for a few days spell. Guess I’ll end up a family man alright. Can’t find anyone I fancy better, and I’m tired of pub life. What say you?’
¹⁴

To that question there is no recorded reply though, generally, the Kingsford Smith family was just happy that Chilla sounded as though he might have found someone wonderful to settle down with, after such a prolonged period of rattling around like a spare nut in a jam tin. Too, it was clear he had a good job. One year after Western Australia Airways’ disastrous beginning, it had achieved a 97 per cent efficiency rating in terms of keeping to its schedule, and it had actually made such a good profit that it could afford to pay its shareholders a dividend. With his extra responsibilities and greater flying time Kingsford Smith had been granted a £50 increase in his annual salary. Thank heavens he was secure in his employment, and earning a steady and reliable wage for the first time since the war had finished. Not that his wage went far enough for him. It never did. Still, he thought he was closing in on what the problem was, as he wrote to his parents on 7 February 1923 from Geraldton:

I have been working out why I can’t get ahead of my bank balance. I found out the average weekly bill for hotel and washing comes to just on a fiver, through moving about so much. And as I’m paying off still to Airways for a loan for shares and monthly payment on the motorbike, it doesn’t leave me anything to spend at all. I think I’ll have to get spliced. Not that I relish losing my erstwhile freedom, but I must have a home at this job, or otherwise I’ll have to chuck it. It’s a ghastly coast line after one has been up and down it a few dozen times and to finish one’s run with one’s only prospect of going ‘home’ to a bush pub—Gawd!

Wish I could aviate across the Pacific or do some damn thing, but even that is fading into things impossible, tho’ longed for.
¹⁵

Of the many frustrations that Kingsford Smith had at this time, one particularly gnawed at him. It was that he and his fellow pilots were accomplishing on a daily basis the kind of thing that the press on the east coast were raving about as if it was something world-breaking.

At one point Kingsford Smith was certain that he had broken an Australian record by flying from Broome to Port Hedland—310 miles in two and three-quarter hours—at an average speed of 113 miles per hour, only to read upon his arrival a breathless account in an east-coast paper about how one Nigel Love—the bloke who had established that new airport at Mascot—had won the second Australian Aerial Derby off Victoria Park racecourse, just ahead of Hudson Fysh, at the colossal speed of 75 miles per hour!

‘I’m not too keen on publicity,’ he wrote to his parents, for all the world as if he meant it, ‘but it seems funny that no-one over there seems to realise that we do quite some flying on this service. About as much in a week, in fact, as the rest of the Commonwealth does in a month altogether! The mileage flown on the mail route alone is now nearly 40,000. Yours truly has done about 19,000 miles of that himself…’
¹⁶

The answer, of course, was to do something that would make the east-coast press sit up and take notice, and Smithy knew just the thing—a flight around Australia using one of WAA’s planes, to bring both the airline and himself favourable attention. His idea had been that such a feat would garner him valuable experience in flying truly long distances against the clock, day after day, and also get for him the publicity and thus, credibility, he needed to attract sponsors. He wanted to fly from Perth, via Derby and Darwin, across to Queensland and down the coast to Sydney, Melbourne and then across to Perth again.

And yet, even though Major Brearley had expressed initial interest, in the end he and the board of the company decided against allowing it on the grounds that they couldn’t spare either a plane, or their best pilot, for the time it would take to complete the flight. Too, Brearley noted in a formal letter to Kingsford Smith that even the Controller of Civil Aviation, Horace Brinsmead, was against him making such a flight…
¹⁷

Still, the Pacific dream burned on, and despite Kingsford Smith’s occasional pessimism that it could ever happen, he and Keith Anderson continued talking about it. For the time being, though, all they could do was to continue flying in the hope that something would turn up to bring the possibility of that flight closer…

The British are coming!

In the autumn of 1923, an imposing British naval squadron, including the most powerful battle cruiser afloat, the mighty
Hood
, and four attendant cruisers, was en route to the harbour city of Sydney, and day by day, the newspapers were trying to outdo each other with features, columns, snippets of gossip and endless speculation as to when exactly the squadron would arrive. All put together, such expectation sold papers in enormous numbers and this was good.

In his office at the
Sun
—on Flinders Street in the suburb of Darlinghurst—on the afternoon of Monday, 7 April 1923, the veteran newsman Herbert Campbell-Jones was doing what he did most days. That is, he was trying to work out just how to get a jump on his many rivals in the bitter newspaper war that was then under way, hoping for inspiration on how to get the story or the photo that none of his competitors had. He was in just such a mood, when through the fog of cigarette smoke, stench of printer’s ink and endless clatter of typewriters going nineteen to the dozen, emerged a visitor with a very interesting proposal.

His name was Charles Ulm, he was another veteran of the Great War, and more importantly still, he had an aviation company which he wanted to place at the service of the
Sun
, for the right price of course. Why not, he asked, send one of his planes down the south coast to get photos of the fleet
before
it arrived?

Sold!

So quickly in fact did the editor agree to Ulm’s requested fee of £500 that the young aviation entrepreneur felt certain that he might have been able to squeeze him for double that amount, if only he had been a little more greedy. It was a mistake he was determined not to make again. Never mind, the object, to establish a deal with a major newspaper and demonstrate the power of planes to lift circulation when the right story was on offer, was on track. For when Ulm did exactly what he had promised to do, and the
Sun
was able to sell every copy by providing photos of the fleet at a time when they hadn’t even reached Sydney Harbour, a firm relationship was established between Ulm and Herbert Campbell-Jones.

This timely injection of money allowed Ulm to keep alive what had become his dream—apart from that one he shared with many other pilots of flying the Pacific of course. Surveying the fledging Australian aviation industry, he had become convinced that the best and most profitable way forward was to establish a fleet of planes capable of flying between the major cities, and carrying everything from people to cargo to, particularly, post, which he viewed as the key component of a successful airline. In England, others had reached the same conclusion, and the noted aviation commentator Lieutenant Colonel Felton Vesey Holt, who had been one of the first recruits to the Royal Flying Corps, had written: ‘Private aviation having come to nought, there is only one other way to keep a large civil aviation organisation in being, and that is to establish an airmail service in England.’
¹⁸

Exactly! Once ‘airmail’ took hold in Australia, Ulm was convinced, with a letter being delivered from Perth to Sydney in just a little over a day—instead of the ten days it took currently by ship—the public would refuse to send it any other way, and would be happy to pay the extra cost. The key was to get the tender from the government to carry that post, and Ulm set about proving to the Federal government that he was just the man, with just the airline to do it.

From the beginning, he was up against it. Only a couple of years earlier, Postmaster-General William Webster had been quoted extensively deriding the whole concept: ‘The whole question of aerial mails is absolutely impracticable as far as this country is concerned. They may be of some value in densely-populated countries, where short journeys are entailed, but here in Australia, with our sparse population and long distances between big mailing centres, the whole position is as different as night is from day. You just said now that Australia will be the last country to encourage aerial mail services. Let me tell you that, unless I’m very much mistaken, Australia will be the last county in the world to require them.’
¹⁹

Unperturbed by such negativity, and there was plenty of it around, Charles Ulm pushed on. He sent his proposals to the Federal government, who acknowledged receipt, and filed them away in the ‘circular filing cabinet’. Forever…

Broke again. Always bloody broke. This could
not
go on. On 2 June 1924, in the middle of a letter to his parents, Kingsford Smith noted, ‘I feel bad at not having sent any more over recently, but I have been slugged with £73.18.6 income tax, and have been at my wits end to find it…’ Before that letter had reached home, however, a cable arrived on 6 June 1923 that came as quite a shock.

Married five minutes ago. Thelma and self send fond love—Chilla.
²⁰

He’d done
what
? Married a girl they hadn’t even met, and without inviting anyone from the family to be there? What had he been
thinking
?

A follow-up letter from their son a few days later, however, explained how it had all happened.

He had gone out to Meentheena to bring Thel in for the Marble Bar Ball—a really big do in those parts, held annually—and one thing had led to another. They were having a bit of a drink in the pub, talking about their plans for the future when the thought hit them—why wait? Why not marry right away, as in,
today
? They were, after all, in the prime of their lives, and every month they weren’t married was a month of each other they were missing. If they were married they wouldn’t have to keep making these infernal trips to and from Meentheena, and could be
together.
True, Smithy’s capacity to be a provider for them in the long term was a little unsure, but Thel proved to be a brick on this subject.