Record Non-Stop Fight

Hokitika Guardian, 29 April 1921, Page 4

Record Non-Stop Fight

SYDNEY TO BUNDABERG. SYDNEY, April 19. Almost every week some incident or other strengthens the claim that young Australians make ideal airmen. Some of their flights have become world famous ,and the latest achievement —Lieutenant Bert Hinkler’s non-stop flight from Sydney to Bundaberg in a Baby i Avro —will probably be given a promin- J ent place in aviation annals. At 6 o’clock oil the morning of April llbh this young man took the air in a small, one-man machine, fitted with a 35 horse-power engine which is ten years old. He had 26 gallons of petrol in his tank. He headed almost due n .•Ah, and he crossed the Queensland border exactly i;J hours after starting. ) The train journey from Sydney to the j border occupied over 16 hours. Hinkler kept straight on, over StanI tliorpe, Toowoomba, Kilkivan, and at 2.35 p.m. ho was over his home town ol Bundaberg. He landed on a little cleared space called “Foundry Green,” within a stone’s throw of his parents’ cottage. The two aged people were delighted at his totally unexpected ap-

pearance. The'flight was 700 miles in 8 hours 40 minutes—a record, for that class of machine, for Australia, and probably for the world. This was not Hinkler’s first notable flight of this character, however. He made a name for himself, a \ear or two ago, by flying a Baby Avio from London to Turin in a non-stop flight. He intended then to fly on to Australia in his Baby Avro, hut lack of means effectually stopped him. He is a cool and daring young man—only •27 years old—and he has all his life been devoted to aviation. He was making flying machine models before he was 16. He was a successful airman in the war, having downed a number of enemy flyers.