Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men (59 page)

I am delivering to the California Bank at Los Angeles for transmission to the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney, Bill of Sale transferring to Kingsford Smith and Ulm the Southern Cross together with release and discharge of all your indebtedness to me. I beg you to accept this gift as a token of our mutual friendship, and as my tribute to you and the Southern Cross…
⁹¹

There were hundreds, and then
thousands
of cables, which just kept coming, including one from the President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge:

Hearty congratulations to you and your companions on successful flight Oakland to Australia. Your brilliant and courageous pioneering has advanced the cause of aviation and strengthened bonds between your Commonwealth and our country.
⁹²

One other message that particularly stood out for Smithy came from the owner of Mount Philip station, one of the biggest sheep runs that he had served in his days with the Gascoyne Transport Company:

Heartiest congratulations. How ‘bout the contract for this season’s loading? It’s yours!
⁹³

It was wonderful, absolutely wonderful to have clearly given so much pleasure to so many people they had known through the years, together with the broad mass of their fellow Australians.

And yet as frenzied as their reception in Brisbane had been, it was as nothing to what happened in Sydney on the following day. For when they emerged out of a clear blue sky on their approach to Mascot airport, in the mid-afternoon of Sunday, 10 June 1928, they were greeted by forty planes, including one flown by none other than Keith Anderson.

At his home at picturesque Pittwater on the northern outskirts of Sydney, Bill Taylor, the former pilot with the Royal Flying Corps, looked up to see the resplendent
Southern Cross
pass overhead, and was instantly inspired.
That
was what he wanted to do. He wanted to get into some pioneer flying himself. As the mighty plane flew in over the city, factory sirens wailed, ships and ferries sounded their horns and people crowded onto the roofs of city buildings as Smithy circled first over Hyde Park and then dipped low over the Cenotaph in his own tribute to fallen comrades of the Great War. If he was surprised at the lack of people in the streets, then there was an impressive explanation.
⁹⁴

For there at Mascot aerodrome when the
Southern Cross
touched down at 3.08 pm was the greatest gathering of Sydneysiders in the one place at the one time that had ever been.
⁹⁵
Whether it was 200,000, 300,000 or 400,000, all of which estimates were subsequently reported, it was not possible to say. All that everyone knew was that there were more people than anyone had thought possible.
Everyone
was there! And they were all cheering, just as cars were tooting and ships in Botany Bay sounding their horns, with the overall effect so strong that, according to one writer, ‘it made Gabriel’s trumpet sound like a tin whistle competing with a barrage’.
⁹⁶

Once again, amid such a large crowd, it was no small matter to actually get the plane down safely before everyone was rushing towards them in the now familiar fashion. As they alighted and waved, people threw their hats and handkerchiefs in the air and cheered themselves hoarse, the more so when all four airmen were put on the back of a truck and taken for a quick spin around the tarmac so everyone could see them up close.
⁹⁷

A rather disconsolate figure standing by the hangars as all the cheers rang out, all but entirely unnoticed except by one observant reporter, Keith Anderson looked rather lost and lonely.
⁹⁸
He was in an impossible situation, and yet was at least able to rouse himself enough to push through the crowd to rather solemnly shake Smithy’s hand and give a curt nod to Ulm, all without saying a word.
⁹⁹

On a special dais set up for the occasion, Smithy’s parents and family awaited the crew, as did Charles Ulm’s new bride, together with many distinguished dignitaries, including the Governor-General of Australia, Lord Stonehaven, and the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Dudley de Chair. The Premier of New South Wales, Thomas Bavin, had the decency to stay away, which was to the good, all things considered. When Ulm placed a full-lipped kiss on his new bride, Josephine, the crowd roared appreciatively.
¹⁰⁰

There was something different about that day, something that felt
Australian
in a way it never had before. It was an effect rather heightened when there was a sudden ‘trampling of toppers’ and a ‘mangling of monocles’
¹⁰¹
as the proud descendants of convicts and other unwanted folk of the Old World surged forward, eager to be part of a new, world achievement.

As to Smithy, he was clearly overcome when embracing his own parents—truly safe at last—even as Catherine Kingsford Smith kissed her beloved boy on his notably tanned cheeks and said with a smile, ‘Go and wash your face, you dirty little boy.’
¹⁰²

He was home.

Twelve
THE URGE TO ELSEWHERE…

The black chaotic void, punctuated every few seconds by great jagged rents of lightning which, like vivid green snakes, seemed to leap at us from every direction.

C
HARLES
K
INGSFORD
S
MITH
,
ON THE
S
OUTHERN
C
ROSS
’
S
TRIP ACROSS THE
T
ASMAN
¹

An aviator’s life may be full of ups and downs, but the only hard thing about flying is the ground.

C
HARLES
K
INGSFORD
S
MITH FREQUENTLY SIGNED AUTOGRAPHS IN THIS MANNER
²

F
or Kingsford Smith and Ulm home would never be the same again, in the way that it treated them. They had left Australian shores as no more than a couple of well-known pilots who had a couple of creditable feats to their name, particularly the round-Australia trip. But in a nation starved for heroes—the Great War had been over for ten years, and the national cricket team only middling in recent times—they had returned as the brightest stars in the firmament.

Awards and riches were showered upon them. His Majesty bestowed upon the 31-year-old Kingsford Smith the Air Force Cross, while the Australian government made him an honorary squadron leader in the RAAF—for which he had never flown. Ulm meanwhile became an honorary RAAF flight lieutenant. And they were not even in the air force, a fact which did not escape the attention of officers who were.
Harrumph!

A rare note of criticism was also penned by one E.J. Hart, the acerbic editor of
Aircraft
magazine:

With the crossing of the Pacific by a Dutch monoplane, American-engined, fuelled and lubricated by the products of the US, another fatal temptation is finally removed from venturesome spirits who had long aspired to the distinction of being the first to fly a land machine across the water from America to Australia. Now that the goal is reached…it is fervently to be hoped that land machines will be permitted to resume their proper place in the sphere of practical, commercial utilities—and that there will be no more staking of life and property against that wily old monarch with the loaded dice, King Neptune.
³

Such churlishness, however, was very much the exception, as almost everyone else seemed to exult at their achievement and the name ‘Kingsford Smith’, particularly, now resonated to the point where all of the rest of his family were now practically
defined
by the fact that they were related to the great man.

The government’s initial cheque of £5000, as a sign of its appreciation, had been promptly matched by Lebbeus Hordern, as he handed over a cheque for the same amount.
⁴
Those two handsome cheques, though, were just bare beginnings to the riches now coming their way, as the Sydney
Sun
and Melbourne
Herald
made an appeal to their readers to make what was effectively a donation to the ‘boys’, which brought the total to over £20,000. The cast of the hit musical
Rio Rita
, then playing in Sydney’s St James Theatre, invited all the crew of the
Southern Cross
to a performance, and the proceeds of the evening were given to them at the end—at least to Smithy and Ulm, while Lyon and Warner tried not to let their fuming show.
⁵

Now,
now
as money continued to pour in, Smithy could at last return to his family much of the generosity he had received from them over the years, and one of the first things he did was to buy Kuranda for his parents, and put it in their names—something he had wanted to do since at least 1922, when he had first started to earn a decent regular wage. He also established a trust fund from which his parents would be able to draw £4 a week for the rest of their lives.

In all the excitement after this triumph of Australian aviation, Lawrence Hargrave was not forgotten. Almost in the manner of paying homage, Kingsford Smith and Ulm paid a visit to Sydney’s Technological Museum to inspect the first box-kites and monoplane models constructed by Hargrave, some three decades earlier. Their guide from the museum, a Mr T.C. Roughley, also showed them one of Hargrave’s early rotary engines and explained how Alberto Santos-Dumont would never have got off the ground without it.

Afterwards, a singularly thoughtful Kingsford Smith noted to the waiting press how intensely interested he was, and also expressed the view that he was ‘convinced that Australia does not yet realise all that the world’s aviators owe to the experiments of Lawrence Hargrave’.
⁶

The next day Hargrave was also remembered when the two pilots attended a special church service at St Mark’s, Darling Point, to mark their safe arrival. From behind his pulpit, the Reverend Canon Howard Lea referred to Lawrence Hargrave as the ‘pioneer of aviation’, and quoted one Professor Threlfall from 1894, who had written, ‘Sydney will someday be noted, not so much for its beautiful harbour, as for the residence of the inventor of the flying machine.’
⁷

And amen to that!

Lyon and Warner? Understandably anxious to get back to their families, they had taken the first steamer home after the initial round of celebrations was over, and the two pilots had come aboard the SS
Sonoma
to see them off.

‘We did enjoy ourselves,’ Harry Lyon told the
Sydney Morning Herald
just before boarding the ship. ‘You folks made us feel at home. When our Australian friends come to America, they will get a reception just as big.’
⁸

Which was saying something, because for wherever Kingsford Smith and Ulm went—and that was just about everywhere, including major trips to Canberra, Melbourne and Perth—they were greeted with the sight of their fellow citizens lining the streets and cheering them to the echo as they made their way to parliaments, civic receptions, lunches and dinners.

On their way from Laverton, a little west of Melbourne, to Maylands in Perth—which just happened to be the first non-stop flight across the continent, landing on the morning of 9 August 1928—they slashed the cross-Australia record to twenty-three and a half hours, and managed to buzz Adelaide on the way through. As the
Southern Cross
was now an Australian plane, and as Australia was part of the British Commonwealth, it acquired British registration, with the letters ‘G-AUSU’, the ‘AU’ standing for Australia and ‘SU’ for Smith and Ulm.

Three cheers for Smithy! And for Ulm! And definitely in that order!

There was something about Smithy, that larrikin charm, that twinkle in his eye, that dazzling smile, the wonderfully
Australian
nonchalance he displayed about what he had achieved, that way he had of speaking so that even if you were one of a crowd of 30,000 it felt as though he was talking to just you, that meant that everyone adored him. In a nation sometimes resembling ‘little England’, ruled by pork-pie hats and three-piece suits, he was an Australian original, a man of the people, with goggles, leather jacket, ciggie and a ready grin that would warm the cockles of your soul.

From being ‘Smithy’ to just his nearest and dearest, he was now ‘Smithy’ Australia-wide. Ulm was respected—after all, he had flown with Smithy—but he was not outright loved the way Kingsford Smith was.

Smithy! Smithyy!
Smithyyyyy!
Over here! Over
here
!

He was over there. Sitting at the top table at a welcome home lunch in Sydney Town Hall on the Tuesday after they landed, surrounded by some of the city’s finest dignitaries, Smithy wasn’t exactly hard to find. And Bobby Hitchcock had no hesitation in walking up to him and handing him a writ. He then turned on his heel and walked off. Bobby was suing them, claiming that he had been promised £1000 if they succeeded in their trans-Pacific flight, and he now wanted it, too right he did. Bobby had a wife and three kids to support, and he needed that money, which he felt was rightfully his.