The first Aussie home-builders

[Marty_d]

Interesting little article!

 

Flight of the outback daredevils created aviation history

 

 

[turboplanner]

Interesting little article!Flight of the outback daredevils created aviation history

Museums are becoming a worry, with their internecine fighting over what will go on display, and about 20% of the collection actually on display to the public, with so much being degraded in storage or lost, but how could you lose a historic aircraft?

 

 

[onetrack]

Thanks for bringing this article and story to our attention, Marty. As someone who worked around the W.A. Goldfields as a gold miner and mining contractor, from about 1972 to 1995, I knew all about this aircraft and its flights, but I'd virtually forgotten about it, until I saw the article.

 

The story lacks detail in some areas. I seem to recall reading that when the aircraft first crashed on the return flight to Kalgoorlie, it was some time before a recovery party arrived - and that party found to their dismay, that feral goats had chewed up a fair bit of the wing fabric, causing even more damage!

 

One of the more amusing and breathless write-ups on the aircraft, occurred courtesy of the "West Australian" newspaper (see link below).

 

One has to remember that aeroplanes were as fascinating to people in 1915, as space orbiters are to people today.

 

AVIATION IN PERTH. - FLIGHT BY BIPLANE

 

I wonder if any of those souvenir air-mail envelopes, from the special Perth to Fremantle postal flight by "Kalgoorlie", have survived? They would be worth a great deal, I would imagine, as souvenirs of Australia's first ever air-mail service.

 

AVIATION IN PERTH. - FINE FLIGHT OVER THE CITY BY THE BIPLANE

 

It would appear the sheer lack of financial backing, along with the cost of running the biplane, was the reason the "Kalgoorlie" disappeared virtually forever from the news and from public view.

 

In addition, as WW1 progressed, attention turned more and more to the horrendous and increasing casualties in the "War to end all Wars", and away from entrepeneurial enterprises such as building and flying ones own home-built aircraft.

 

Finally, the greatest nail in the coffin of early flying was the major decrease in available manpower during WW1.

 

Many of the mines around the W.A. Goldfields closed down between 1915 and 1918 as WW1 progressed, as the mine employees decided they were needed at the front, to beat that scourge of the Hun, and went off to War.

 

Probably fully 85%-90% of the mines in the W.A. Goldfields never re-opened after the end of WW1, because their employees never returned from the War, or the ones that did return, were vastly changed men, and they no longer desired to work in the mines.

 

The period after WW1 saw a huge upsurge in Agricultural production, and many of the former mine workers returned from WW1, and then promptly took up farming - which to many was seen as a better way of life as compared to working on the mines.

 

 

[onetrack]

...but how could you lose a historic aircraft?

Well, TP, you've explained it in the earlier part of your paragraph. The "Kalgoorlie" was more than likely "lost" because it became seriously degraded, beyond redemption, due to very poor storage.

In the early days of museum operations, a lot of items were stored under very poor conditions, and I would have little doubt that the "Kalgoorlie" was stored in the open, due to the Museum not having a storage area big enough to hold a biplane.

 

The ravages of the weather and sun would have no doubt seen the aeroplane degrade very rapidly until it merely became a troubling liability - and it would have then been disposed of, as an item the museum had no real interest in, nor adequate funding to carry out major restorative work. I'm sure a lot of similar worthy historical items met the same fate.