History Revisited - Flying into city's aviation history book

WOMEN IN THE FORCE: In this week's column, Jim Belshaw delves into the region's aviation history by looking at the story of Jeanne Upjohn who became involved with flying as a member of the Women's Auxiliary Australian Airforce 

This column returns to the early days of civil aviation in New England.

When East-West Airlines started passenger flights in 1948, Jeanne Upjohn became one of its first two hostesses. The other was Carmel Paul.

Jeanne had become involved with flying during the war as a member of the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF). Formed in March 1941 after considerable lobbying by women keen to serve and by the Chief of the Air Staff who wanted to release male personnel serving in Australia for service overseas, the WAAAF was the first and largest of the World War II Australian Women's Services. In all, around 27,000 women served in the WAAF.

Upon joining the WAAF, Jeanne undertook an equipment officer’s course and was sent to Laverton base as corporal in charge of a unit of six women. There she was promoted rapidly, with men as well as women reporting to her, itself something of a challenge. She also met and would subsequently marry Flight Lieutenant Bill Upjohn.

As EWA was being formed, Bill applied to become a pilot but was ruled out on health grounds. Jeanne then put her hand up to become a hostess. To her, the thought of becoming part of the aircrew was exciting after her years as ground crew.

At 5 foot 7 inches, Jeanne was quite a tall women, while the planes were small. She was told that if you can fit, mate, you’re in. She did, just!

These were very much make-do days. The male pilots wore their old air-force uniforms, while Jeanne modified her WAAF uniform to create the first hostess uniform. Later, she would design the first unique EWA hostess uniform for us as a summer uniform.

EWA began flying with small seven seater Avro Anson planes. Given their small size, the hostesses would normally seat the passengers, make sure that they were comfortable, give them a minty and then send them off! Only on special flights would seats be removed so that the hostess could travel with the plane.

One such involved, Cyril Garbett, the Archbishop of York. He was brought to the plane in Moree accompanied by various dignitaries and a police escort. In full church regalia, the 73 year old Archbishop was crimson faced in the high heat, as was his secretary.

The flight to Coffs Harbour was marked by thermals that threw the plane up two or three thousand feet and then down again. The poor and now ill Archbishop begged for tea, but it was just too rough for him to drink it. It was a trip he would not forget.

In the last days of 1949, the Ansons were at last replaced by Lockheed Hudson planes. East West took out  the normal 12 seats, replacing them with 24 smaller ones with a narrow aisle in the middle. Now the hostesses traveled with the plane.

To Jeanne, one enduring memory was the friendships established with the regular customers who treated the plane in much the same way as they did their own car. It was very much a family thing.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 4 November 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History Revisited - how one TAS Old Boy took to the skies

P G Taylor and Charles Kingsford Smith welcomed in Hawaii on the first Australia-US plane flight

“Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines” captures in comedic form some of the strangeness and excitement associated with aviation’s early day. A number of the early Australian pioneers had connections with Northern New South Wales.

Sir Patrick Gordon Taylor (1896-1966), more commonly known as PG or Bill, was born at Mosman, Sydney, on 26 October 1896. His father, also Patrick, was a successful businessman who built up considerable business interests fuelled by urban growth on Sydney’s North Shore assisted by judicious company re-arrangements.

Taylor early acquired a sense of adventure and a love of the seas, roaming Pittwater in his dingy including an expedition to uninhabited Lion Island, site of a major Little Penguin Colony. Taylor’s parents chose to send the boy to The Armidale School to complete his education. There he finished his schooling as senior prefect.

Rejected by the Australian Flying Corps, Taylor went to Britain and was commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps in August 1916. There he served with distinction, winning the Military Cross and being promoted to Captain.

Like many First World War pilots, Taylor acquired a love of flying. During the 1920s, he flew as a private pilot, completing an engineering course and studying aerial navigation. He was drawn into the circle around Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm.

In 1933 and 1934, he flew between Australia and New Zealand as Smithy’s second pilot and navigator on the Southern Cross, acted as navigator on Charles Ulm’s return flight to England and with Smithy completed the first Australian-US flight. However, it was the events of May 1935 that established Taylor as a heroic figure in the public mind.

On 15 May, a heavily laden Southern Cross took off for New Zealand on the King George V jubilee airmail flight with Kingsford Smith as pilot, Taylor as navigator, John Stannage as radio operator.

Six hours into the flight, part of the exhaust manifold on the centre engine broke off, badly damaging the starboard engine propeller. Smithy closed down the engine, applied full power to the other two engines and turned back for Australia while the crew jettisoned the cargo.

This is one of the few airmail letters that survived the flight.

 The oil pressure on the port engine began to fall rapidly, dooming the flight. Climbing out of the fuselage, Taylor edged his way against the strong slipstream along the engine connecting strut and collected oil from the disabled starboard engine in the casing of a thermos flask. He then transferred it to the port engine.

Assisted by wireless operator, John Stannage, Taylor had to repeat this process six times before the aircraft landed safely at Mascot some nine hours later.

In 1946, these events were dramatised in the Columbia Pictures/Ken Hall production Smithy, with Taylor playing himself. Not unexpectedly, the film was popular at the Saturday night films put on for TAS boys!

Taylor went on to a long and successful career as pilot, businessman and, perhaps less expectedly, writer, publishing eight successful books with adventure, flying and sea themes.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 5 August 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

Postscript

Coincidentally, at the time this column came out,  freelance writer and film maker Rick Searle released a biography of Patrick Gordon Taylor, The Man Who Saved Smithy. You can hear an interview with Rick here. .

History revisited – New England aviation, the final chapter

This column concludes my history of New England civil aviation with the story of the tumultuous air wars of the 1980s, air wars that were central to the reshaping of Australian civil aviation.

Under the Australian constitution, the states have legal control over civil aviation within state boundaries, the Commonwealth control over civil aviation between states.

In 1952, the Menzies Government passed the Civil Aviation Agreement Act establishing the two airline policy. The aim was to created a stable operating environment that would ensure services. In 1957, this policy was further strengthened. The aim, the Government said, was to ensure that there were two and not more than two operators on trunk line services.

It was this policy that set the scene for the Commonwealth Government’s unsuccessful attempt in 1961 to force East-West to merge with Ansett. Following the failure of the Ansett bid, East-West continued to expand, nibbling away at the edges of the two airline policy. By 1980, East-West was clearly the third largest carrier in Australia.

The growth of East-West encouraged new entrants during the 1970s, including Oxley Airlines (Port Macquarie) and Aeropelican (Newcastle). In Tamworth, Tamair/East Coast was expanding under the leadership of John Roworth.

East-West’s attempts to expand into the Northern Territory incurred losses that led to dissension on the Board. This opened the door in 1982 for Duke Minks and Brian Grey to acquire the airline with the assistance of a $7.5 million loan from the Nauru Phosphate Trust.

Three years later, the airline was sold for a substantial profit to Ric Stowe’s Perth based Sky West. Encouraged, Brian Grey would go on to found Compass with some what less than spectacular financial results.

Under both Grey and then Ric Stowe, East-West mounted an aggressive and ultimately successful campaign against the two airline policy. In 1987, the Commonwealth Government gave three year’s notice of the end of the policy, starting a scramble for aviation assets.

As part of this scramble, East-West was sold in July 1987 to a company jointly controlled by TNT and News Corp, the owners of Ansett. After twenty six years, Ansett had finally won.

Ansett’s takeover of East-West forced route divestiture. This opened the way for East Coast, later Eastern and then Eastern Australia, to expand. As part of this process, Australian Airlines acquired East-West’s 26% share of Eastern, gaining full ownership in1991.

The turmoil had major local impacts. Here I think of 18 September 1991 as a symbolic dividing line.

On that date, the Ansett controlled East-West announced that it was closing its Tamworth maintenance facility with the loss of 220 jobs and terminating all connections with Tamworth and the North. Two years later, the name East-West vanished from the skies, removed as a consequence of corporate change.

Eastern or Eastern Australia lasted until 2002. Then owner QANTAS merged all its regional carriers into an entity called QantasLink. Another proud New England name vanished from the skies, removed as a consequence of corporate change,

Man proposes, the market disposes; an era had ended.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 16 April 2014. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for2014.

The first post in this series is History revisited – introducing a flying history. From there, you can follow the story though.

History revisited – growing aviation tensions

In my first column in this series on the history of civil aviation in New England, I wrote of the formation of the North’s first and second major airlines, New England Airways (1931) followed by East-West Airlines (1947). In my second column, I described the formation and early growth of Tamworth Air Taxis/Tamair (1949), the company that would form the core of New England’s third major airline, Eastern.

The 1970s were a remarkable period for New England civil aviation. East-West Airlines successful 1961 defence of its independence against Commonwealth Government pressure to merge with Ansett had opened a chink in the Government’s rigid two airlines policy. Since then, East-West had been constantly pushing the boundaries as it sought new business.

During the 1970s other new regional or commuter players entered the fray, seeking to establish new routes. These included Aeropelican Air Services (Newcastle), a new New England Airways (Armidale), Oxley Airlines (Port Macquarie) and Air North Coast (Coffs Harbour).

Development activity was especially intense in Tamworth as the headquarters of both East-West and Tamair.

A far larger than life figure, East West’s Don Shand was a lateral thinker constantly bubbling with new ideas. East-West planes would seed the sky to encourage rain fall. That rain would fall on pastures improved by aerial agriculture, on crops improved by new hybrid seeds. The land would be mapped from the air, while the passenger planes flying above would use New England wool in furnishings and insulation.

A number of Don’s ideas failed. His vision of an international university of air training headquartered at Tamworth airport as part of the University of New England appears to have foundered on Armidale parochialism. Tamworth would later get its air academy, but without UNE or Armidale involvement. But despite the sometimes failures, enough of Don’s ideas succeeded to lay the base for multiple new activities across the North..

Don died in November 1976. By then, Tamair’s John Roworth had embarked on his own rapid expansion phase.

In 1976, Tamair acquired Airfarm & Associates, another East-West spin-off founded by Basil Brown, followed by New England Airways (1977) and then Air North Coast (1978). Other acquisitions followed, including Avdev (previously Advance Airlines) and Wings Australia. With so many new routes, Tamair was renamed East Coast Computer Airlines to better reflect its new scope.

As part of these changes, Roworth introduced East-West as a shareholder, along with other local investors. This provided greater financial backing, but Roworth was also interested in East-West’s thinner traffic routes. These, he thought, might be better served by East Coast’s commuter services, allowing East-West to focus on its main routes.

The scene was now set for the dramatic New England aviation wars of the 1980s that I will describe in my final column in this series.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 9 April 2014. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for2014.

The first post in this series is History revisited – introducing a flying history. From there, you can follow the story though.

History revisited – a considerable influence

I finished my first column on the remarkable history of civil aviation in New England with the successful 1961 fight by East-West Airlines against a hostile takeover by Ansett Transport Industries backed by the full power of the Federal Government.

I will return to the story of East-West a little later. Now, I want to introduce a new player, one that would become the third New England airline of national importance.

The creation of East-West had a considerable economic impact on the North beyond the immediate value of the air services themselves or indeed the money spent locally by East-West itself. This impact came from the new businesses created as a consequence of East-West’s existence.

In Tamworth, for example, Jack Hannaford built his bus and coach company around the need to shift East-West passengers. By the late 1950s, Hannaford’s was one of the first two coach companies to enter the Northern Territory marketplace.

A second company was Tamworth Air Taxis, later Tamair, then East Coast Airlines, then Eastern Airlines and finally Eastern Australian Airlines.

Tamworth Air Taxis owed its existence to Jim Packer’s love of flying. A Barnados Boy, Packer had come to Australia as a twelve year old in 1929. After working on diary farms around Qurindi and Tamworth, he later worked at The Tamworth Gulf Club.

In 1937, he joined the Tamworth Aero Club and started spending every available penny on flying lessons, acquiring his private pilot’s license in 1938. In 1941, Jim joined the Royal Australian Air Force, becoming a pilot in the No 4 Communications Unit.

With the establishment of East-West Airlines in 1947, Jim started work in the company’s electrical engineering department, also working as a charter pilot for East-West.

In 1949, East-West withdrew from charter work following a forced landing during a major flood. Jim then formed Tamworth Air Taxis in partnership with Bruce Cann, supported by local farmers including Colin Proctor. Tamworth Air Taxis took over and extended the charter work previously done by East-West, including air ambulance work.

In 1953, Jim renamed the company Tamair. He also convinced the Sydney afternoon newspapers that they would make more money if he could collect the afternoon papers delivered to Tamworth by East-West around 1:00 pm and then fly them to smaller centres across the North.

This work provided bread and butter for Tamair, supporting the company during seasonal downturns and facilitating the extension of its services into a range of new areas including aerial survey work and a flying school.

In 1971, Tamworth business man John Rowarth took control of Tamair, starting a period of rapid expansion that would entwine Tamair and East-West and would play a critical role in the fundamental changes that were to sweep New England civil aviation.

In my next column, I will return to the story of East-West and the dramatic events that were now to take place.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 2 April 2014. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014.

History revisited – introducing a flying history

I wonder how many readers know of the significant role that New England has played in the history of Australian aviation? These are just some of the airlines with New England connections: New England Airways (Lismore), East-West Airlines (Tamworth), .Eastern Airlines (Tamworth), Aeropelican (Newcastle), Oxley Airlines (Port Macquarie) and Impulse Airlines (Newcastle).

The story of those airlines begins in the very early days of commercial aviation and continues to the present time. It is one of struggle for survival, of expansion, takeovers and collapses, of crashes. It is also one of political fights and fierce lobbying, of dreams lost and won.

The story has determined who flies us, but also links to the rise and sometimes fall of a whole variety of associated businesses. This column is the start of that story.

The first airline, New England Airways, was founded in 1931 by George A Robinson, part of the North Coast’s Robinson transport family. Lismore based, New England Airways began with a bi-weekly Lismore-Brisbane service, later extended to a Lismore-Sydney service. This created the first and very popular Sydney-Brisbane link.

The photo shows passengers from one NEA flight. Weren’t they dolled up?!

The airline grew, acquiring the assets of the bankrupt Kingsford Smith founded Australian National Airlines. Reflecting its new role as .a national carrier, the airline was renamed Airlines of Australia in 1935. In 1942, it was acquired by the second Australian National Airlines (ANA) and effectively vanished from view.

The next major New England airline, East-West Airlines, was founded in 1947 by local grazier and entrepreneur Don Shand. The airline had intended to fly from Moree to Inverell to Grafton, but quickly found that the routes to Sydney were highest traffic.

East-West Airlines early days were rocky. It was difficult to make money. Still, by 1955, a passenger in Armidale had a choice of regular scheduled services to both Sydney and Brisbane.

East-West had to contend with more than simple economics. Its growth was also restricted by Federal Government policies that mandated that there be no more than two national carriers.

In 1961, a huge political fight broke out when Ansett Transport Industries tried to take over East-West Airlines.

Central to that fight was pressure on East-West by Civil Aviation Minister Robert Paltridge supported by Prime Minister Menzies. Don Shand was told that East-West, must accept the Ansett bid. Shand went public with the pressure, the Minister denied it.

White and shaking, David Drummond as Member for New England rose in the House to confirm the airline’s story. The Government was on a knife edge, with a one seat majority. The House was empty as Drummond began to speak. As he spoke, the benches and gallery filled.

No one could deny Drummond’s honesty. With support from the NSW Labour Government, the airline was saved.

I will continue the story of New England aviation in my next column.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 26 March 2014. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because the columns are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014.

These are the following posts in this series:

• History revisited – a considerable influence
• History revisited – growing aviation tensions
• History revisited – New England aviation, the final chapter

Aviation and the Perdriau Rubber Company

Gordon Smith's Old news from Armidale and New England carried two stories that caught my eye.

The first was For sale: “Booloominbah”. As it happens, I am presently reading Mathew Jordan's A spirit of true learning, a jubilee history of the University of New England. I will write more on this a little later.

In the second story, Sydney to Brisbane flight in nine hours, the name Perdriau caught my attention. The story deals with a Friday 9 July 1920 flight by a plane owned by the Perdriau Rubber Company that landed at no less than six New England towns on its way through.

The Perdriau Rubber Company was formed by Henry Perdriau and ultimately became Dunlop. I had no idea that the company was involved in aviation.

Henry's nephew Raymond took up a selection on the Tweed River in 1906; he carried on dairying and, later, banana-growing. A strong New Stater, he was elected to the NSW Legislative Assembly as a member for Byron in 1920. There are some interesting stories here that I should write about, for the period after the 1920 elections was politically stormy.

James Swan - New England Aviator

Photo source.

This post simply records material taken from Jim Swan's web site. Given Jim's age, I am recording it so that it can be found at another source. I note that some of the photo links no longer work.

Jim writes:

"I WAS Born 1922 in Parramatta NSW. For 73 years my official place of residence was Girraween, 5 Km west of Parramatta.
An extract from the opening paragraphs of my "memoirs" titled "Flight of a Swan" suggests that very early attraction to matters of the surrounding environment existed. I quote:

"On a grassy sward in a Sydney backyard, a five year old boy sprawled beneath the branches of a plum tree, with the first blossoms of an early spring just visible against the blue sky which was sprinkled with the pure white of bubbly fair weather cumulus clouds.

He rolled over and gazed in awe at the sheer beauty of that sky which seemed to spread forever. It was during those few minutes of peaceful bliss that he felt he had a place up there with those clouds, that was where he intended to be at home, free as the air he breathed and part of the beauty of it all... He was going to fly!!"

As the years passed, his interest was captured by the magic of radio, first hearing a "crystal set" and somewhat later a "portable" valve set, an Airzone which had four bright shiny valves and cost a fortune to run on batteries. Then at the age of 12 or so the household acquired a four valve "Strad" which ran off mains power but received only the broadcast band which was a little disappointing as at my Grandmothers home I had been introduced to "short wave" and had actually heard overseas stations. However, I did find at the very bottom of the dial a small group of stations called "amateurs", who broadcast music and talked about radio after the commercial stations had closed for the night. It was a great thrill in the late seventies when as a new Amateur, I had a QSO with one of those Old Timers (No music hi hi).

So my radio career began by first repairing the ancient crystal set and making it work!! Then a spell of making single valve regenerative receivers from the debris of the "Airzone" which had passed its use by date. A couple of small amplifiers and a whacking great high quality speaker box brought my practical experience up to the mid 1970s.

The intervening years had not been wasted - I joined the Royal Australian Air Force the day I turned 18 and before aged 19 had commenced training as a pilot. I contrived to remain in the service until the last day of the wartime Airforce and returned to my clerical work with the Department of Main Roads. However, by late 1946 I had joined Trans Australia Airlines as a Pilot (First Officer) becoming a Captain (Training Captain) by 1954. At that time I transferred to East West Airlines to assist them in their expansion program. Having progressed through the ranks as Training Captain, Check Captain to Chief Pilot and becoming responsible for the pilot standards on F27, DC3, and the number of other types operated by the company. I decided to retire in 1975. I had over 21,000 hours and had flown 18 types of aircraft.

The RAAF experience ranged from Coastal Search and Surveillance, through Test and Ferry to Operational Recce and Bombing Strikes in the East Indies area.

During the airline service there were standard scheduled passenger flights, freighters, Air tours around Australia, training aircrew, testing pilots and a few delivery flights of new aircraft from Holland to East West Airlines. A very varied existence!!! However, when I retired I found that despite doing some private flying for enjoyment and instructing in instrument flying on a synthetic trainer, I still missed a component of my flying days, and that was the continuous use of radio communications. As CB was just coming into its own in Australia, I started to run a small 4 watt A.M. rig, normal range was about 40 miles but I did make DX to Kingaroy Queensland.

The legalisation of CB ruined that form of radio as it was swamped by masses of yahoos or whatever, so I decided that I would join the ranks of Amateur Radio."

Sunderland Flying Boats, Clarence River

One thing I noticed a little while ago when posting Clarence Valley timeline was the reference to the start of the Sunderland Flying Boat service in 1948.

This photo from the Clarence River Historical Society shows the planes on the River.

Until I saw this reference I had no idea that such a service had once existed, yet another thing that I did not know about New England's history.

Nor did I know that P G Taylor had used the river as a set down point. Quoting:

By 1951 the final ocean to be traversed for air travel was the South Pacific between Australia and South America. On 13 March 1951 Captain P.G. Taylor set off from the flying boat base at Rose Bay in Sydney with a crew of four. They made a shakedown flight to Grafton, NSW, landing on the Clarence River, and next morning headed east for South America. Stops were made at Noumea; Fiji; Samoa; Cook Islands; Tahiti; and Mangareva, French Oceania and then Easter Island before arriving in Valparaiso on 26th. March 1951.

High Lean County - the story of the New England Tablelands

Edited by Alan Atkinson, J S (John) Ryan, Iain Davidson and Andrew Piper, High Lean Country: land, people and memory in New England (Allan & Unwin) captures, in the words of the blurb, "the rich history and haunting character" of the New England Tablelands region.

The authors explore how memory - of land, of family, of patterns of life on the other side of the world - has influenced the identity of New England. They also consider how the high country itself has shaped its people and their sense of regional uniqueness.

There are aspects of the book that I disagree with.

Focused on the Tablelands and to a lesser degree the interaction between the Tablelands and the broader state and national world, the book tends to ignore broader regional linkages and is arguably written from what I think of as the "little New England" perspective that came to dominate and indeed blinker Armidale and University of New England thinking from the early 1980s.

I will do a proper analysis of the book at a later point. For the moment I only note that it is well written, contains new insights and is a valuable read for those interested not just in New England but also Australian history in general. For those who are interested, you can read the book minus some pages on Google books.

New England Airways - History PhD student wanted

Photo: Keith Virtue, New England Aviation pioneer

I need a PhD student!

One of the problems all postgraduate students in history face is defining a topic that will interest them while getting them a degree. Well, I have a topic.

I would love to see someone write the history of New England Airways. Not only will this get you a PhD, but it will almost certainly give you a base for a very good book!