From my earliest years I was fascinated by aeroplanes. At the age of 10 I built model aeroplanes which consisted of a single thin strip of balsawood which served as a fuselage, to which was attached a wing having a balsawood frame covered with tracing paper and a similarly constructed tail fin and tailplane. Motive power was a propeller carved from balsawood connected to an elastic band stretching along the fuselage to the tail. The elastic thread was twisted up by rotating the propeller. The plane was placed on the ground, the propeller released and the plane rose into the air and, with luck, flew a circuit before landing.

My childhood was a time when aviation was at its most exciting stage of development. Australia had a proud record, beginning with Hargraves and his box kites in the 1890s and continuing with John Duigan who designed and built his own aeroplane and successfully flew it at Mia Mia in Victoria on 7 October 1910. This was less than seven years after the Wright brothers flew the first successful aeroplane at Kittyhawk, North Carolina, in December 1903.

I was three years of age when Ross and Keith Smith completed the first flight from England to Australia in their World War I Vickers Vimy twin-engine biplane, arriving in Darwin in 28½ days. That flight has been repeated recently by a replica. I had not long turned 11 when I was thrilled by the exploits of Bert Hinkler in flying solo from England to Australia in his tiny single-engine Avro Avian biplane.

Bureau of Meteorology