PIONEERING FLYING AND AN AIRLINE

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30959, 15 January 1966, Page 4

PIONEERING FLYING AND AN AIRLINE

The Life of a Genius. By Gerard Fairlie and Elizabeth Cayley. Hodder and Stoughton. 192 pp. Qantas Rising. By Sir Hudson Fysh. Angus and Robertson. 296 pp.

The period late 18th and early 19th century saw some' extraordinary Englishmen at, work, in statecraft, politics.! religion, agriculture. One of. the less well-known to people today. Sir George Cayley (1773-1857), is claimed to be the pioneer of aviation. He was curious about natural! phenomena and kept records of careful detail. Thus when the flight of birds stimulated! his imagination and acute rea-[ soning powers, Cayley was thereafter able to demonstrate! the lifting effect that could be i obtained from surfaces moving through the air at a slight. incline to horizontal; also the! use of a tail as a means of' obtaining longitudinal stability. His glider took to the air in 1852 and in it was also incorporated the principle of streamlining a superstructure. He sought to develop a hotair engine for propulsion, without success, although he was apparently very near the critical point of discovery which others soon after exploited to develop the interal combustion engine. If he was indeed the father of aviation, Sir George Cayley would appear also to have been one of the most inventive Englishmen, notwithstanding his inheritance of a wealthy baronetcy at the age of 19 a situation which in those times normally led to comfortable inactic;i. Events provoked him to action. A lifeboat disaster was followed by Cayley’s recommendation for the use of selfrighting mechanisms in the boats; he aided safety in railways by proposing buffers and automatic brakes, safely in theatres with the use of his safety curtain: safety in labour by his construction of an artificial limb safety in ground transport by using his caterpillar - tracked vehicle. As a member of parliament he advocated measures for the well-being of ordinary people and he pioneered in Britain aspects of land reclamation and allotment agriculture. Being so aware of the needs of people he also conceived an institution where they could be educated in the developments of practical science, and this led to the foundation of what was to be the Regent street polytechnic.

All this and more is claimed for Sir George Cayley but the book has no documentation, no references that can be examined, no index. Evidently models of some of his devices exist in museums. The technical and scientific aspects of his work on aeronautics have been more adequately appraised by tv; i experts, J. Laurence Pritchard and C. H. Gibbs-Smith whose books on Sir George Cayley appeared in 1961-62. The book under review aims to relate the work of an ingenious man to his private life—a wife who had no interest whatever in his ideas; bringing up numerous children; the inspirational support and devotion of a female cousin. The story is largely presented by the use of dialogue which might appear fictional but the authors seem to have reconstructed events satisfactorily, based upon study of family records and letters. It seems that it was only recently that Cayley has been acclaimed for his work in the founding of aviation: in the air age of today, honour can clearly be accorded this man. From Cayley over a 100

years ago who had vision of aeroplanes of the future, we can pass now to Hudson Fysh and his associates who made them, for Australia, the transport reality of modern times. The prestige international airlines now have generic names of worldwide comprehension and prominent among the genera is Qantas —originally, “Queensland and Northern Territories Aerial Services.” The author rather fatuously sub-titles the book “the autobiography of the flying Fysh” but his personal story 1 is certainly inseparably linked with the development of the organisation in which he served as a foundation pilot, managing-director and currently. chairman of the board. After World War 1 service; in the Middle East, where Fysh started with horses and finished as a flyer in the unpredictable crates of 1918, he j and P. J. McGinness back in Australia surveyed an airroute as a consequence of their pioneer car traverse (what a car they had!) of the Gulf of Carpentaria region from Western Queensland to Darwin. This was to serve their objective of a transportation company formed in 1920 and supported by two graziers. They lost money for four years on air-taxi and ambulance activity, using a cast-off Bristol Fighter and an Avro Dyak. Aided then by subsidy, Qantas steadily began to rise, although it was cap and goggle, low altitude flying with no landing nor radio aids, until 1924 when a DH 50, 4-passenger cabin plane became available. The company actually had some years of building this type of plane under licence at their Longreach base, an undertaking that had no parallel in Australia at that time. They also provided the aeroplanes and pilots for the beginnings of Flynn’s Flying Doctor service. Hudson Fysh was personally close to the others who infused the spark that made for

| the development of aerial 'freight and mail services in ’Australia —Ross Smith. C. W. IA Scott. Kingsford-Smith, Ulm, Hinkler, and the references to these and also to I government figures who had vision, like Colonel Brinsmead. widen the human interest of the book. As competition quickened among the developing companies, each had an eve on the projected England to Australia service and Qantas worked to ensure that entry would eventually be through Darwin Brisbane, and not Wyndham—Perth. When Australian National ■ Airwavs of Kingsford-Smith [and Ulm fell by the commer- ! cial wayside and prospective I amalgamations proved abortive. Qantas and Imperial Airways prevailed (1934), and at that stage the autobioi graphy ends— unsatisfactorily 130 vears ago. I A second volume is promised to relate the modern [era which can hardly be as [colourful and human as the founder period. One volume could have sufficed and could have been possible and entirely effective had the author been more ruthless in pruning the plethora of detail largelv concerning himself personally. It is certainly an autobiography, but Sir Hudson Fysh as a person and Qantas are not entirely identical: he states himself that Qantas is a democracy, not a one-man show. His enthusiasm for the company’s story is entirely justified but he has been poorly advised in the planning of the contents of his combined autobiography and Qantas story. There are several informative appendices on directorate, staff, revenue, finance, planes used and a good index that will serve the needs of research. Australians will certainly appreciate the informality of the author’s style and find much of interest in the sidelights and anecdotal passages relating to so many who have figured in aviation and public life in Australia.