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Edgar Towner

By Victoria Cross

BORN
19 April 1890

DIED
18 August 1972

Lieutenant Edgar Thomas Towner

Edgar Thomas Towner (1890-1972), soldier and grazier, was born on 19 April 1890 at Glencoe station, near Blackall, Queensland, son of Tasmanian-born Edgar Thomas Towner, grazier, and his second wife Greta, née Herley, from Ireland. His parents were among the first settlers on the Barcoo River. Edgar was educated at home, at Blackall State School and at Rockhampton. In 1912 he took up his own selection which he optimistically named Valparaiso; before developing it, he enlisted on 4 January 1915 as a private in the Australian Imperial Force. By March 1916 he was on the battlefields of Belgium and France, a sergeant in the 25th Battalion. In the year that followed he was commissioned lieutenant and twice mentioned in dispatches for ‘devotion to duty and consistent good work’.

At Morlancourt, France, on 10-11 June 1918 he was awarded the Military Cross while fighting with the 2nd Machine-Gun Battalion. One of the first to reach his objective near the town of Albert, he quickly brought his section into action, thereby assisting troops from the 7th Infantry Brigade to advance and consolidate; he also made use of captured enemy machine-guns. On the morning of 11 June he capped his gallantry with a feat of daring in daylight, helping to re-establish a post under heavy attack ‘at great personal risk’. On 1 September he again distinguished himself at Péronne during the assault on Mont St Quentin. In the early stages of the advance Towner single-handedly captured an enemy machine-gun, then brought his men forward to produce ‘such effective fire that the Germans suffered heavy losses’. He later took twenty-five prisoners before capturing another machine-gun ‘which, in full view of the Germans, he mounted and fired so effectively that the enemy retired, thus enabling the Australians to advance’. Even when wounded, Towner continued to fight and to inspire his men. His bravery was rewarded with the Victoria Cross which was gazetted on 14 December 1918.
The hero returned to Australia in April 1919, but was unable to raise sufficient funds to stock his property. He gave up Valparaiso, went jackerooing and did itinerant work for three years from 1922. Entering into a partnership in Kaloola station (near Longreach) in 1925, Towner thenceforward made the pastures and lands of central Queensland the focus of his life and successfully built up Russleigh Pastoral Co., Isisford.

He took on the bush just as he had accepted the challenges of battle and stuck it out through hard times, preserving his stock as best he could. Towner made himself an expert on the frontier environments of western Queensland and Central Australia. In 1955 he crowned his lifelong geographical work with an address to the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia in Brisbane; his efforts were rewarded with the James Park Thomson gold medal and a fellowship of the society; next year his address was published as a booklet entitled Lake Eyre and its Tributaries.

Edgar Towner was a big man with an imposing personality. In military kit he was burly and tough-looking, but out of it he was shy and distant, engrossed in thought. Without wife or children, he was deemed a loner. A younger generation regarded him as eccentric: always to be seen wearing a suit and frequently disappearing into the outback for long periods of study or exploration. Towner died at Longreach on 18 August 1972 and was buried in the local cemetery with Anglican rites and full military honours.

Albert Borella

By Victoria Cross

BORN
07 August 1881

DIED
07 February 1968

Lieutenant Albert Chalmers Borella

Albert Chalmers Borella (1881-1968), soldier and farmer, was born on 7 August 1881 at Borung, Victoria, son of Louis Borella, farmer, and his wife Annie, née Chalmers, both native-born. His mother died when he was 4 and his father remarried. Educated at Borung and Wychitella state schools, he later farmed in the Borung and Echuca districts; he also served for eighteen months with a volunteer infantry regiment, the Victorian Rangers.

On 15 March he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force as a private and was posted to ‘B’ Company, 26th Battalion, on 24 May. After training in Egypt his unit landed at Gallipoli on 12 September and Borella, who was promoted corporal later that month, served there until November.

The 26th Battalion sailed for the Western Front in March 1916; Borella was wounded in the battle of Pozières Heights on 29 July and was evacuated for four months. He was promoted sergeant in January 1917, and in March was awarded the Military Medal for conspicuous bravery at Malt Trench, Warlencourt. Commissioned second lieutenant on 7 April, he was mentioned in dispatches soon afterwards and in August was sent to England for officer training and promoted lieutenant. In the early months of 1918 the 26th Battalion held the line at Dernancourt, where Borella was mainly engaged in patrolling and raids. He fought at Morlancourt and Hamel and on 17 July, for ‘most conspicuous bravery in attack’ at Villers-Bretonneux, was awarded the Victoria Cross. While leading his platoon in an assault on an enemy support-trench, he noticed a machine-gun firing through the Australian barrage; he ran out ahead of his men into the barrage, shot the gunners with his revolver and captured the gun. He then led a small party against the strongly held trench, bombed two dug-outs and took thirty prisoners. Only weeks after this incident he was invalided to Australia owing to wounds and illness.

In 1920-39 Borella farmed on a soldier-settlement block near Hamilton, Victoria. He was National Party candidate for Dundas in the 1924 Legislative Assembly election and was only narrowly defeated. He married Elsie Jane Love at Wesley Church, Hamilton, on 16 August 1928; from September 1939, when he changed his name by deed-poll, he and his family used the surname Chalmers-Borella. On the outbreak of World War II Borella was appointed lieutenant in the 12th Australian Garrison Battalion with which he served until 1941 when he was attached to the Prisoner of War Group at Rushworth. Promoted captain on 1 September 1942, he served with the 51st Garrison Company at Myrtleford until discharged in 1945. He then moved to Albury, New South Wales, joined the Commonwealth Department of Supply and Shipping, and was an inspector of dangerous cargoes until his retirement in 1956. Survived by his wife and two of his four sons, he died on 7 February 1968 and was buried with full military honours in the Presbyterian cemetery.

‘A big tough-looking bloke, the image we conjure up of the digger’, Borella was yet a humane, quietly spoken and unostentatious man, ever ready to assist a worthy cause. Streets in Albury and Canberra are named after him.

Neville Howse

By Victoria Cross

BORN
26 October 1863

DIED
19 September 1930

Brigadier General Neville Reginald Howse

Neville Howse was born on 26 October 1863 at Stogursey, Somerset, in England. He was educated at Fullard’s House School, Taunton, before studying medicine at London Hospital. Howse migrated to New South Wales, establishing his first practice in Newcastle before moving to Taree. After undertaking postgraduate work in England, Howse returned to Australia in 1897 and settled in Orange.

In January 1900 he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the New South Wales Medical Corps and sailed for South Africa. He was serving with a mounted infantry brigade at Vredefort where, on 24 July, he rescued a wounded man under heavy fire. For this he was awarded Australia’s first Victoria Cross. He was promoted to captain in October the same year.

Howse returned to Australia, but went back to South Africa as an honorary major in the Australian Medical Corps in February 1902, just as the war was ending. Howse was twice elected mayor of Orange and married Evelyn Pilcher in Bathurst in 1905. When the First World War began in 1914 he was appointed principal medical officer to the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force to German New Guinea, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. His medical knowledge and logistical skills ensured that there were no cases of serious illness and he returned to Australia in time to join the first AIF contingent as staff officer to the Surgeon General, director of medical services.

In December 1914 Howse was promoted to colonel and appointed assistant director of medical services, 1st Australian Division. At Gallipoli he took charge of evacuating wounded men from the beach in the campaign’s opening days. “Shells and bullets he completely disregarded”, wrote one officer, but “to the wounded he was gentleness itself.” Unafraid to speak his mind, at the Dardanelles commission in 1917 Howse described the arrangements for dealing with the wounded at the landing as inadequate to the point of “criminal negligence” on the part of the Imperial authorities. In September 1915 he was given command of ANZAC medical services and in November became director of the AIF’s medical services.

Based in London once the AIF moved to France, Howse made regular visits to France and retained control of the Australian Army Medical Corps in Egypt and Palestine. He consistently endeavoured to maintain the physical standards of the AIF and late in the war attributed its success in part to the efforts he and his staff made in ensuring the physical and moral fitness of Australian front-line soldiers.

Howse was knighted in 1917 and in 1920 made a brief return to private practice before resuming work with the army. He resigned in 1922 and was awarded the federal seat of Calare for the National Party. He held several ministerial portfolios, including defence and health. In 1930 he went to England for medical treatment but died of cancer on 19 September. He was survived by his wife and five children.

Sir Hubert Wilkins

By Great Australians

BORN
31 October 1888, Hallett, South Australia

DIED
30 November 1958, Framingham, Massachusetts

Sir Hubert Wilkins MC & Bar

Wrap up all the great Australian heroes into one, add a few more adventures- such as pioneering movie coverage of news events that grabbed the world’s attention and trying to be the first to manoeuvre a submarine under the arctic icecap – and you have Sir Hubert Wilkins. Yet few have heard of the man, let alone his exploits.

‘Hubert Who?’ They wonder.

Explorer, Pioneer Aviator, War Photographer, Naturalist, Meteorologist, Author, Student of the Paranormal, Secret Agent; Loyal to Shackleton, Bean and Hearst; The last man from the West to meet with Lenin…

Sir Hubert lived so many lives, all of them exciting and fantastic.

He shot the worlds first movie footage from an aircraft (while strapped to the fuselage) and he was the first to fly over BOTH Polar Icecaps. He was the only member of the media ever to be awarded medals for Gallantry (during World War 1). Australia’s commanding officer General Sir John Monash, called Wilkins “the bravest man I’ve ever seen – Australia’s answer to Lawrence of Arabia.” Wilkins was wounded nine times, awarded the Military Cross twice and mentioned in multiple dispatches.

The first man to attempt to take a submarine under the North Pole, a spy for the British in Soviet Russia and the Americans in the Far East, and an enlightened friend to Aboriginal people in the outback.

Recently, Sir Hubert was inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame and the Cinematographers Hall of Fame. Yet this South Australian farm boy is barely acknowledged here in his homeland.

Born on the 31st of October 1888 at Mount Bryan South Australia, the youngest of twelve to farmer Henry Wilkins and Louisa, née Smith. As a child George (as he was known to the family) experienced the devastation caused by drought caring for his own 200 head of sheep and two horses. This developed his life long interest in climatic phenomena. He worked his influence in Russian, American, Canadian and Antarctic lands to install weather stations.

Exploring the Antarctic and the Arctic Circle he made some of the most innovative scientific discoveries of the early 1900s.

Can you believe that some of what we know about weather came from Sir Hubert Wilkins’ research almost a hundred years ago.

Wilkins spent his life developing food and textiles for the American Quartermasters Store until his passing with a heart attack in 1958 at age seventy. One year later his idea was proven correct when the submarine USS Skate surfaced at the North Pole to scatter the ashes of Sir Hubert to honour his life!

Sir Hubert Wilkins was a hero in every sense.

A fellow explorer exclaimed: people like Hubert take us places we might not otherwise go and reveal truths that might otherwise stay hidden.

Nancy Wake

By Great Australians

BORN
30 August 1912, Wellington, New Zealand

DIED
7 August 2011, London, England

Nancy Wake AC GM

“Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, AC, GM was a secret agent during the Second World War. Living in Marseilles with her French industrialist husband when the war broke out, Wake slowly became enmeshed with French efforts against the Germans, and worked to get people out of France.”

Nancy Wake, a prominent figure in the French Resistance during the Second World War, was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on 30 August 1912. Her family moved to Sydney, where she grew up, when Nancy was just 20 months old. She ran away from home at the age of 16 and found work as a nurse, but a windfall enabled her to leave Australia for Europe in 1932. Wake settled in Paris, working for the Hearst group of newspapers as a journalist.

As the 1930s progressed, the rise of German Fascism formed the basis of many of Wake’s stories. In 1935 she visited Vienna and Berlin where the overt and violent anti-Semitism formed in her a desire to oppose Nazism. In November 1939 she married Henri Fiocca, a wealthy industrialist, in Marseilles. Six months later Germany invaded France. Wake and Fiocca joined the fledgling Resistance after France’s surrender in 1940.

Her growing involvement in the Resistance saw Wake and her husband assisting in the escape of Allied servicemen and Jewish refugees from France into neutral Spain. Fearful of being captured she too fled Marseilles and after several thwarted attempts and a brief period in prison, Wake escaped across the Pyrenees. In June 1943 she reached England where she began working in the French Section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

After a period of training, Wake returned to France in April 1944 to help organise the Resistance before D-Day. Working in the Auvergne region, Wake was engaged in organising parachute drops of arms and equipment, and after D-Day, was involved in combat with bodies of German troops sent to destroy the Maquis.

Upon liberation, Wake learned that her husband, Henri, had been killed by the Gestapo in August 1943. In September 1944 she left the Resistance and went to SOE Headquarters in Paris and then to London in mid-October. After the war she was decorated by Britain, France and the United States but, being unable to adapt to life in post-war Europe, she returned to Australia in January 1949 aged 37. Shortly afterwards she ran for the Liberal Party against Labor’s ‘Doc’ Evatt and having been narrowly defeated, made a second attempt in 1951, again unsuccessfully.

Unsatisfied with life in Australia, Wake returned to England. In 1957 she married John Forward, an RAF officer. The couple returned to Australia in 1959. A third attempt to enter politics also failed and she and Forward ultimately retired to Port Macquarie where they lived until his death in 1997. In December 2001 she left Australia for England where she lived out her remaining years.

She received the George Medal, 1939-45 Star, France and Germany Star, Defence Medal, British War Medal 1939-45, French Officer of the Legion of Honour, French Croix de Guerre with Star and two Palms, US Medal for Freedom with Palm and French Medaille de la Resistance for her courageous endeavours. Wake’s medals are on display in the Second World War gallery at the Australian War Memorial.

Sir John Monash

By Great Australians

BORN
5 February 1891, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

DIED
27 April 1974, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Sir John Monash GCMG, KCB, VD

Sir John Monash (1865-1931) was an outstanding Australian soldier, engineer, and administrator.

On June 27, 1865, John Monash was born at West Melbourne, Victoria, the only son of Louis Monash and his wife Berthe, née Manasse, Jewish migrants from East Prussia (Poland). John attended Scotch College, Melbourne, of which he was equal dux (equalled the highest marks made by others in his courses) and won the mathematics exhibition at the 1881 public examinations.

Monash formed a civil engineering partnership in 1894 with J. T. N. Anderson. They made only a precarious living until Monash began appearing in the courts as an advocate on engineering matters and later was employed as an adviser and negotiator by large contractors. The firm also built bridges. They lost all their capital, however, after an eccentric legal judgment in favor of a defaulting client, and until 1905 Monash remained deeply in debt. He was eventually saved by developing his local rights to the Monier patent for reinforced concrete construction. The companies for major building construction which he now formed and managed became highly profitable. By 1912 Monash was a well to do Melbourne businessman at the head of his profession, a radical president of the Victorian Institute of Engineers, a university councillor and a part-time lecturer.

From 1908 Monash was Victorian commandant of the Australian Intelligence Corps (militia). He became closely involved in staff work and educated himself further on all matters military. In 1913 and 1914 he commanded an infantry brigade as colonel. On the outbreak of World War I he was appointed to command the 4th Infantry Brigade, Australian Imperial Force. He was promoted to major general in command of the 3rd Australian Division, trained it in 1916, and led it ably in 1917 at Messines and in the battles leading up to Passchendaele. In early 1918 he led the division in combatting the German offensive. From May, as lieutenant-general, he was corps commander during the battle of Hamel and the succession of great victories from August 8, including Mont St. Quentin, until the breaking of the Hindenburg line.

He was articulate in explaining battle plans, with extraordinary attention to detail and provisions for avoiding unnecessary risks. His military achievement, given his background as a civilian Jew of Prussian origin, remains astounding. He has sometimes been spoken of as the outstanding Allied general. He was promoted to General in 1929.

After the war, Monash was chairman of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria with the task of harnessing brown coal for the use of industry, then one of the most important national tasks. He succeeded triumphantly, building an institution which for a long time was an outstandingly successful state instrumentality. He was the unchallenged spokesman for returned soldiers; in charge of the Special Constabulary Force during the police strike of 1923 and chairman of the subsequent royal commission; university vice chancellor from 1923; Jewish spokesman and an active Zionist. He brusquely dismissed requests around 1930 to lead a right-wing coup. Monash died on October 8, 1931. His funeral was the most largely attended Australia had known. In the 1920s Monash was unquestionably regarded as the greatest living Australian—a tall poppy who was never cut down. Essentially he was a most gifted administrator; a man of extraordinarily wide knowledge, experience, and scientific and cultural interests; devoted to public service; and eventually, nearly all ambitions achieved, a man who wore his distinction modestly.

Andrew ‘Banjo’ Paterson

By Great Australians

BORN
17 February 1864 “Narrambla”, near Orange, New South Wales

DIED
5 February 1941, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Andrew ‘Banjo’ Paterson CBE

Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson (1864-1941), poet, solicitor, journalist, war correspondent and soldier, was born on 17 February 1864 at Narrambla near Orange, New South Wales.

By 1895 such ballads as ‘Clancy of the Overflow’, ‘The Geebung Polo Club’, ‘The Man from Ironbark’, ‘How the Favourite Beat Us’ and ‘Saltbush Bill’ were so popular with readers that Angus & Robertson, published the collection, ‘The Man From Snowy River and Other Verses’, in October. The title-poem had swept the colonies when it was first published in April 1890. The book had a remarkable reception: the first edition sold out in the week of publication and 7000 copies in a few months; its particular achievement was to establish the bushman in the national consciousness as a romantic and archetypal figure. The book was as much praised in England as in Australia: The Times compared Paterson with Rudyard Kipling who himself wrote to congratulate the publishers. Paterson’s identity as ‘The Banjo’ was at last revealed and he became a national celebrity overnight.

While on holiday in Queensland late in 1895, Paterson stayed with friends at Dagworth station, near Winton. Here he wrote ‘Waltzing Matilda’ which was to become Australia’s best-known folk song.

His most important journalistic opportunity came with the outbreak of the South African War when he was commissioned by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age as their war correspondent; he sailed for South Africa in October 1899. Attached to General French’s column, for nine months Paterson was in the thick of the fighting and his graphic accounts of the key campaigns included the surrender of Bloemfontein (he was the first correspondent to ride into that town).

When World War I began, Paterson immediately sailed for England, hoping unsuccessfully to cover the fighting in Flanders as war correspondent. He drove an ambulance attached to the Australian Voluntary Hospital, Wimereux, France, before returning to Australia early in 1915.

Almost immediately promoted captain, he served in the Middle East. Wounded in April 1916, he rejoined his unit in July. He was ideally suited to his duties and promoted major, commanded the Australian Remount Squadron from October until he returned to Australia in mid-1919.

He retired from active journalism in 1930 to devote his leisure to creative writing. He was by now a celebrated and respected citizen of Sydney, most often seen at the Australian Club where he had long been a member and where his portrait now hangs. In following years he became a successful broadcaster with the Australian Broadcasting Commission on his travels and experiences. He also wrote his delightfully whimsical book of children’s poems.

In 1939 he was appointed C.B.E. He died, after a short illness, on 5 February 1941 and was cremated with Presbyterian forms.

By the verdict of the Australian people, and by his own conduct and precept, Paterson was, in every sense, a great Australian. Ballad-writer, horseman, bushman, overlander, squatter—he helped to make the Australian legend. Yet, in his lifetime, he was a living part of that legend in that, with the rare touch of the genuine folk-poet, and in words that seemed as natural as breathing, he made a balladry of the scattered lives of back-country Australians and immortalized them.

Dame Nellie Melba

By Great Australians

BORN
19 May 1861, Richmond, Victoria, Australia

DIED
23 February 1931, Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Dame Nellie Melba GBE

“Vocalist Nellie Melba (1861-1931) rose from a childhood in provincial Australia to become a world-renowned opera soprano who performed regularly at London’s Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. A diva with a commanding stage presence and a beautiful voice, Melba was the outstanding coloratura of her era and one of the biggest celebrities of the early 20th century.”

Born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1861 as Helen Porter Mitchell, the future opera star was the third-born and first surviving child of Isabella and David Mitchell. Seven more children would follow. Melba grew up in the country estate of Lilydale, near Melbourne.

Her entire family was musically inclined, but Melba was the only child who persisted in music. She attended Presbyterian Ladies College in Melbourne, where Peitro Cecchi recognized her singing talent as a powerful and lilting soprano.

For her stage name she took the name Melba, short for Melbourne; Nellie was the family’s nickname for her. She made her debut in Brussels in 1887, playing the role of Gilda in Rigoletto.

In 1888, Melba made her London debut at Covent Garden, playing the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor. Until 1926, she would be a fixture at the famous London opera house. She also debuted in the United States in the role of Lucia, singing at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, where she would also perform regularly until she was in her mid-sixties.

For most of the nearly four decades of her career, Melba was the greatest diva of her time, even though she was not a great stage actress. Her immaculate, unforced coloratura singing was immortalized in a series of recordings made between 1907 and 1916, including a moving scene from Hamlet.

At her impressive home she entertained many of Europe’s royal families and was a powerful personality and celebrity. When she had an affair with the Duke of Orleans in 1900, her husband divorced her. She did not remarry and had no other children. During World War I, she was unstinting in her war work, often performing at benefit concerts, and in 1918 she was made a Dame of the British Empire.

Melba bade farewell to her native Australia in 1924, releasing a letter that said: “I have tried to keep faith with my art … to make the big world outside, through me, understand something of the spirit of my beloved country.” She then made farewell tours and concerts worldwide, so many so, in fact, that a sarcastic expression arose: “More farewells than Nellie Melba.” She sang at the opening of the nation’s Parliament House in Canberra in 1927, and her final concert in Australia was in 1928. In 1931, refusing to accept her aging, Melba got a facelift, but the operation resulted in a blood infection, and she died in St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, the cause of her death not released to the public.

Ever concerned about her public perception, Melba had even orchestrated her funeral in advance. She had had a photograph taken of her portraying the dead Juliet of Romeo and Juliet, and after her death she was made up to look like the photo, with her bed strewn with frangipani, before anyone was allowed to see her. The funeral attracted national and international dignitaries to Melbourne, and she was buried at Lilydale Cemetery under a monument that depicts her reported last words: “Addio! Senzor Rancor”—”Farewell, without bitterness.”

Sir Charles Kingsford Smith

By Great Australians

BORN
9 February 1897, Hamilton, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

DIED
8 November 1935, Andaman Sea, Burma

Sir Charles Kingsford Smith MC, AFC

“A wartime pilot and pioneer of civil aviation and air mail routes. To his generation “Smithy” became as much a national symbol as Phar Lap or Don Bradman.”

Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith (1897-1935), aviator, was born on 9 February 1897 in Brisbane, fifth son and seventh child of William Charles Smith, banker and his wife Catherine Mary, née Kingsford.

In February 1915 after three years with the Senior Cadets, Kingsford Smith enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force. He embarked with the 4th Signal Troop, 2nd Division Signal Company, on 31 May as a sapper and served in Gallipoli and as a dispatch rider, in Egypt and France. In October 1916, as sergeant, he transferred to the Australian Flying Corps. After training in England he was discharged from the A.I.F. and commissioned as second lieutenant, Royal Flying Corps. In March the next year; he was appointed flying officer in May and in July joined No.23 Squadron in France. Wounded and shot down in August, he was awarded the Military Cross ‘for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty’; he had brought down four machines during his first month at the front and done valuable work in attacking ground targets and hostile balloons. After promotion to lieutenant in April 1918 he served as an R.F.C. flying instructor.

After the war flying became his passion and he piloted joy-flights overseas before returning home in 1921. In the following years he tried to establish viable aviation companies. It was an expensive business and he regularly sought publicity and sponsorship for record-breaking flights.

One epic flight, above all his many others, established “Smithy” as one of the greatest pioneering pilots of all time. On 31 May 1928 he took off from California with Charles Ulm and two American crewmen in a three-engined Fokker, the Southern Cross. For aircraft of this era it was an immense distance, over water all the way. They flew via Hawaii and Suva to Brisbane, fighting storms and near exhaustion, completing the journey in under 84 flying hours.

For his achievements, Kingsford Smith was given honorary rank in the RAAF and awarded the Air Force Cross. He continued on more record-breaking flights to show the feasibility of air passenger and mail services. In 1932 he was knighted for his contribution to aviation.

Most Australians loved Smithy’s dare-devil attitude and his larrikin streak: “a drink and cigarette in hand … he lived hard and fast”. But he was dogged by tragedy: a former colleague, Keith Anderson, died during a search when Smithy went missing briefly in the Northern Territory in 1929; then in 1931 a company aircraft Southern Cloud was lost with all passengers and crew. Finally, in 1935, Kingsford Smith disappeared off Burma while attempting yet another record-breaking flight.

His contribution to civil aviation was an effort of faith and stamina and places him among the world’s notable pioneers. Lean, with ‘cool blue eyes’, generous mouth and terse manner, he is featured on the Australian $20 note. Sydney’s airport is named after him and there is a memorial to him, Taylor and Ulm at Anderson Park, Sydney. The Southern Cross is on view at Brisbane airport. Kingsford Smith was the author of The Old Bus (1932) and with Ulm, Story of ‘Southern Cross’ Trans-Pacific Flight (1928). His autobiography My Flying Life was published posthumously in 1937 and the story of his life was filmed in Australia in 1946.

Jack Mathewson

By Great Australians

BORN
5 February 1891, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

DIED
27 April 1974, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Jack Mathewson

Jack was born into one of Queensland’s pioneering photographic families. His father, Thomas, was regarded as the Father of Photography in Queensland and so, when the First World War began it was quite obvious that Jack’s skills, developed in his father’s studio, would be invaluable in the fledgling field of aerial reconnaissance.

He was part of the Australian Flying Corp’s, 3rd Squadron and was responsible for the processing of photographs taken by crews of the RE-8s. These photographs were then pieced together into a giant mosaic of the battlefields. As Jack was helping to construct maps for the allies’, a German officer, Wilhelm Filchner, famous for leading the first German Expedition to Antarctica, was mapping the battlefields for the German army. In a few years’ time, both these men, once enemies, would have their lives inextricably linked…

After Jack’s return from the war he resumed his life working for his father in his photographic studio but his adventurous spirit and the effects of the war, made settling down to a humdrum existence difficult. Jack always had a strong Christian faith and when a call went out for missionaries to serve in China, Jack enthusiastically responded.
After training, Jack was sent to the western frontier of China, near the Tibetan border. China was in the midst of turbulent times as civil war was brewing. Things became so bad that the order was given to leave China immediately. This of course, was impossible given the remoteness of their location.

At this time Wilhelm Filchner again re-emerged. He was recovering from an overland trek from Moscow and was cared for by the Christian missionaries in Sining. Jack, having become good friends with Filchner, saw the opportunity to escape through Tibet and to be one of the first missionaries to enter this land. And so the journey began…

A caravan was formed and soon the intrepid group crossed the frontier into the mysterious and largely unexplored land of Tibet. The plan was to journey to Lhasa, cross the Himalayas into Kathmandu and then onto British controlled India. Unfortunately, the plan did not work out that simply. Some 60 kilometres from Lhasa the Dali Llama sent 600 armed guards to prevent their entry to the Forbidden City. They were kept under arrest for three months as diplomatic negotiations ensued. Eventually, the Dali Llama still refused them entry but gave a pass which would enable them to be resupplied with fresh yaks and provisions. Because of the delays, they were now into a fast approaching winter. Their destination was Kashmir, a perilous journey across the Tibetan high plains in the shadow of the Himalayas. It soon became a battle of survival as they were forced to cross mountain passes of up to 18 000 feet in the depths of winter. Their supplies ran low and equipment failed. Their footwear became little more than rags and frostbite resulted. They faced death at the hands of robber gangs and on more than one occasion they were able to save each other’s lives from avalanche, rock falls and the extreme conditions they faced. They eventually reached Kashmir in a desperate state… but alive.

Meanwhile back in Australia, the news had been passed on that Jack had been killed, as those who had remained at the mission station had been murdered. A memorial service was held for him. His mother died not knowing he had survived but his long-suffering fiancé never gave up hope that he would return.

Brisbane residents greeted him in their thousands as they welcomed home their hero of this epic adventure.

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All profits from the sale of this book go directly to veteran charities