by Haynes, Jim
But good old Banjo will not die as long as Clancy rides.
As long as bushmen love a horse or wild, black swans go by,
As long as there’s a Southern Cross, the Banjo will not die.
So send the joyous news abroad, through hut and shearing shed,
And tell the bushmen not to grieve, for Banjo is not dead!
WATTLE AND WARATAH
The bush was grey a week today,
Olive green and brown and grey,
But now it’s sunny all the way,
For Oh! the Spring has come to stay
With blossom for the Wattle.
Veronica Mason
Acacia pycnantha, Golden Wattle, is a shrub or small tree which grows 4 to 8 metres tall. The brilliant yellow, fragrant flowers make it a popular garden plant. It is moderately frost tolerant and grows well in a wide range of soils providing drainage is effective, but tends to be short-lived in cultivation. It has become a pest in South Africa and in the Stirling Ranges in Western Australia. It is our national flower.
The approach of Federation brought the desire for national symbols. In 1891 a Melbourne Herald reader, David Scott, advanced fourteen reasons why Wattle should be the national emblem, suggesting that Golden Wattle, Acacia pycnantha, had ‘the highest value’ because of its importance at that time to the Australian leather industry, which used the tannin-laden bark of that particular species in the tanning process.
Archibald Campbell founded the Wattle Club in Victoria in 1899 to promote Wattle Day. He said ‘by numbers, the Wattle is almost exclusively Australian, and should undoubtedly be our National Flower.’ Wattle Day was celebrated in Sydney in 1909. Victoria and South Australia participated in 1910, and Queensland in 1912. In 1992, 1 September was formally declared National Wattle Day by the Minister for the Environment, Ros Kelly, at the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra.
The adoption of the wattle as the national flower was confirmed by its introduction into the design of the Australian arms in 1912. But Acacia pycnantha was not proclaimed the national floral emblem until 1988, at the National Botanic Gardens by Hazel Hawke.
Many, like botanist R. Baker, advocated the waratah, Telopea speciosissima, as the national flower. He wrote: ‘The expression “the land of the Waratah”, applies to Australia and no other; it is Australia’s very own. Africa has over one hundred native wattles, and it also occurs in America, East and West Indies and the Islands . . .’
The waratah, however, does not grow in all states of Australia. Telopea speciosissima is found naturally only in New South Wales. Other varieties are found in Victoria and Tasmania and the plant can be cultivated in most parts of Australia. So some other states opposed the waratah as a national flower.
The conflict which existed about the choice of the Australian national flower is seen in the inclusion of both waratah and wattle flowers as decoration on the three golden trowels used by Governor General Lord Denman, Prime Minister Andrew Fisher and Minister for Home Affairs King O’Malley, for the laying of foundation stones in Canberra, the national capital, on 12 March 1913.
JH
WARATAH AND WATTLE
Henry La wson
Though poor and in trouble I wander alone,
With rebel cockade in my hat,
Though friends may desert me, and kindred disown,
My country will never do that!
You may sing of the Shamrock, the Thistle, the Rose,
Or the three in a bunch, if you will;
But I know of a country that gathered all those,
And I love the great land where the Waratah grows.
And the Wattle-bough blooms on the hill.
Australia! Australia! so fair to behold—
While the blue sky is arching above;
The stranger should never have need to be told,
That the Wattle-bloom means that her heart is of gold.
And the Waratah’s red with her love.
Australia! Australia! most beautiful name,
Most kindly and bountiful land;
I would die every death that might save her from shame,
If a black cloud should rise on the strand;
But whatever the quarrel, whoever her foes,
Let them come! Let them come when they will!
Though the struggle be grim, ’tis Australia that knows
That her children shall fight while the Waratah grows,
And the Wattle blooms out on the hill.
SURF LIFESAVING
A ‘Reel’ Great Invention
Until 1902, swimming in the ocean in daylight was illegal in NSW. It was thought to be indecent. That year, William Gocher defied the law and swam in daylight at Manly Beach. The resulting court case caused the law to be abandoned.
Soon small groups of experienced, regular surfers began to form themselves into lifesaving bodies to assist those who needed to be rescued from an unfamiliar environment. As these clubs grew in size and numbers, the need for a united front to raise funds and seek assistance from local and state governments resulted in the New South Wales Surf Bathing Association being formed on 18 October 1907.
Although the Bondi Life Saving Club was not officially founded until a meeting was held at the Royal Hotel Bondi in February 1907, there was a well-organised group operating on the beach well before that date.
In 1906, Lyster Ormsby, of the Bondi Surf Bathers Club had an idea for a device to enable safer rescue operations at the beach and built a model from a cotton reel and two bobby pins of a portable horizontal reel for the rope. The first full-size reel was built by Sergeant John Bond of Victoria Barracks in Paddington, and was improved on in the same year by Sydney coachbuilder G.H. Olding, whose final design was used until 1993.
The reel allowed a lifesaver wearing a belt with a rope attached to reach a distressed swimmer. The crew on the beach could then pull them back to the beach. It required discipline and control to carry this out efficiently. The first surf lifesaving reel in the world was demonstrated at Bondi Beach on 23 December 1906.
Several weeks later, the reel was used for a rescue for the first time. The Sydney Morning Herald reported the event as, ‘Another sensation at Bondi—a narrow escape of two boys’:
The surf bathers at Bondi had another exciting experience yesterday afternoon, when two lads, Rupert Swallow, a resident of Darlinghurst and Chas. Smith living at McMahon’s Point, narrowly escaped losing their lives.
About 3 o’clock a number of people on the beach noticed that the boys, both of whom were about 9 years old, had been carried out by the undertow, and that they were unable to make any headway towards the beach. The alarm was given, and immediately many willing hands were ready to grasp the lifeline and go to the assistance of the struggling boys. James McLeod, a resident of Park Parade Waverley, and Wm. Burns, of Mill Hill Road, Waverley, succeeded in bringing Swallow into safety; while James McCarthy, of Rowe Street, Darlington and Warwick Wilce, of Croydon, rescued Smith.
When brought to the shore Smith was in a bad way, having lost consciousness, but Nurse Sweeney, of Quirindi, who happened to be on the scene, applied restorative measures, and shortly after both lads were able to return to their homes.
Little Chas Smith was indeed nine years old; he would celebrate his tenth birthday a month later and go on to become Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, war hero, pioneer aviator, Australian legend, and the first person ever rescued by Lyster Ormsby’s new-fangled lifesaving reel!
Surf lifesaving now has more than 80,000 members in more than 260 clubs around Australia. In New South Wales alone, over 58,000 members of 129 clubs protect 1590 kilometres of coastline and perform an average of 6500 rescues and treat 30,000 first aid cases each year.
Lifesaving competitions still include the use of the reel, but it was phased out of active service for rescues in 1994. Now rubber duckies (inflatable boats with outboard motors) carry out over fifty per cent of all rescues.
JH
CHARLES KINGSFORD-SMIT
H
Tragic and Troubled Hero
Smithy was one of seven children of William Smith and his wife Catherine Kingsford, whose family were well known in Queensland: her father was Mayor of Brisbane in 1876. William went into real estate in Canada in 1903 and worked as a clerk with the Canadian Pacific Railways before the family returned to live in Sydney at the end of 1906.
Not long after the family returned to Australia, Smithy, aged nine, became the first person to be rescued using the new lifesaving reel at Bondi Beach. Charles was partly educated in Vancouver, St Andrew’s Cathedral Choir School, Sydney, and Sydney Technical High School. At sixteen, he was apprenticed to the Colonial Sugar Refining Co Ltd.
He was at home in both the USA and Canada and his record-breaking flight across the Pacific was, in fact, an American funded venture and the Southern Cross was an American registered aircraft.
Kingsford-Smith served in the first AIF at Gallipoli and on the Western Front before joining the fledgling Australian Flying Corps and, as second lieutenant with the Royal Flying Corps, was shot down and awarded the Military Cross ‘for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty’. He had brought down four German planes before having several toes shot off when he was shot down. Promoted to lieutenant he served as an RFC instructor until the war ended. He then went to the USA to fly and perform stunts in a flying circus and in early Hollywood movies.
Smithy returned to Australia and flew in Western Australia. He formed a partnership in 1924 with fellow pilot Keith Anderson to form a trucking and aviation business.
Smithy then started raising money for the historic flight across the Pacific. The New South Wales government helped and so did the businessman Sidney Myer, but US oil magnate G.A. Hancock provided most of the money.
With Charles Ulm and two Americans, Harry Lyon and Jim Warner, Smithy took off from Oakland, California, on 31 May 1928. He flew via Hawaii and Suva to Brisbane, completing the historic crossing in 83 hours and 38 minutes of flying time. The fliers received subscriptions of over £20,000 and Smithy was awarded the Air Force Cross and appointed honorary squadron leader, Royal Australian Air Force.
Smithy was a controversial figure. First, Anderson, no longer a partner, sued unsuccessfully for part of the prize money from the flight across the Pacific. Then Smithy caused a scandal by divorcing and remarrying eighteen months later. His aviation company went broke after the Southern Cloud crashed in 1931, while taking mail to Melbourne. He was accused of costing the lives of two mates who died during the search for the Southern Cross, which he had crash-landed on a deserted beach in Western Australia in 1929. Some in the press said it was a publicity stunt to raise money for his flights. Smithy denied this and an inquiry exonerated him of any misdoing. He was also a member of the extreme right wing militaristic organisation known as the New Guard.
Sadly, fame did not stop his life from being troubled and full of financial worries and he was forced to keep breaking records to raise funds.
Smithy and Tom Pethybridge left England on 6 November 1935, attempting to break the record to Australia in the Lady Southern Cross, a Lockheed Altair single-engined aircraft. Smithy had not been well for some time and suffered severe headaches during the two-day flight to Allahabad. The next day, Jim Melrose, who was engaged in an attempt to break the solo Britain to Australia record, sighted the Lady Southern Cross over the Bay of Bengal.
‘I could see jets of flame spurting from Smithy’s plane’s exhaust pipe,’ Melrose said, ‘and I was overcome by an eerie sensation as I watched.’
Despite a huge search, no trace was ever found of Lady Southern Cross.
JH
KINGSFORD-SMITH
WINIFRED TENNANT
Ask the sun; it has watched him pass—
A shadow mirrored on seas of glass;
Ask the stars that he knew so well
If they beheld where a bird-man fell.
Ask the wind that has blown with him
Over the edge of the ocean’s rim,
Far from the charted haunts of men,
To the utmost limits and back again.
Ask the clouds on the mountain height,
The echoes that followed him in his flight,
The thunder that prowls the midnight sky,
If a silvered ’plane went riding by.
If the birds could talk, would they tell of the fall
Of a god who winged above them all?
Of an eagle-man, by the world’s decrees,
King of the blue immensities.
QANTAS
When World War I flying aces Paul McGinness and Hudson Fysh were given a job scouting out a route and air strips for the 1919 London-to-Sydney Great Air Race, they came into first-hand contact with the difficulties of getting around in the bush.
One hot Sunday afternoon in Cloncurry, driving to a picnic, McGinness met influential grazier, Fergus McMaster.
McMaster’s car had broken an axle in the dusty bed of the Cloncurry River and he had walked to town for a replacement. The garage was closed, perhaps its owner was at the picnic, so McGinness cheerfully removed corrugated iron from the garage wall and found an axle.
He drove McMaster back to his car and helped the older man fix it.
The seeds of a future partnership were planted and, as a result, on 20 June 1920, McGinness and Fysh sat with McMaster at a glass-topped table in Brisbane’s elegant Gresham Hotel to register a new airline company.
Still young, still feeling displaced by their war experience and too restless for ordinary occupations, McGinness and Fysh were determined to seize their chance. They tried a number of different names for the company and finally chose Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited, QANTAS.
On 10 February 1921, the first board meeting was held at Winton, in the Winton Club, which is still there today. It was the only meeting held in Winton, as a decision was promptly taken to shift company headquarters to Longreach. It felt more prudent to be closer to that railhead, with easier access for passengers and spare parts.
On 21 May 1921, the first annual general meeting of shareholders was held at Longreach. The original paid-up capital was £8650. The rest is history, all thanks to a broken axle.
JH
THE AUSSIE AIRLINE
JIM HAYNES
There’s a hangar out at Longreach, a relic of the past,
That was first home to an airline that, it seems, was built to last.
An airline that was born upon a hot November day
In the year of 1920 and went on to show the way
To every other airline that you just might care to name,
The second oldest in the world, that’s just one claim to fame.
The oldest airline anywhere they use the English tongue,
And the safest airline ever, though born when flight was young.
Born out of a necessity, in this great land of ours,
To lessen isolation, turn weeks and months to hours,
To join the city to the bush, to keep the flag unfurled,
And go on to join our isolated nation to the world.
Its symbol is an icon, the flying kangaroo,
It shows what good old Aussie ingenuity can do.
I’m sure Sir Hudson would be proud, that famous flying Fysh,
To see it flying safely still; so here’s a final wish;
May QANTAS and the flying kangaroo fly on forever,
And safely bring the whole world, and Australians, together.
HOW TWO CHILDREN’S STORIES SAVED THE KOALA
The koala is a mostly nocturnal marsupial, averaging about 10 kilograms in weight. Koala is an Aboriginal word meaning ‘no drink’. The koala only drinks when there is not enough moisture in the gum leaves. They used to be found throughout Australia and they can live in a variety of habitats, from coastal islands to dense eucalypt forests and inland woodland areas.
Koalas were widespread until the 1900s and were hunted indiscriminately until the 1920s when hunting
was restricted. When the hunting season was reopened in Queensland in 1927, over 800,000 koalas were killed in less than a month.
Norman Lindsay’s drawings and his children’s story, The Magic Pudding (published in 1918), helped Australians see koalas as not just a food source, but it was New Zealander Dorothy Wall’s story Blinky Bill that helped popularise the cause of the koala and helped to save our unique Aussie icon. After her famous children’s books were published in 1933, there was a public outcry and this finally convinced state governments to shut down the hunting season and declare the koala a protected species.
Koalas look cuddly and fat but are actually long and lean. They share with humans the evolutionary feature of opposable thumbs and carry their own seating in a pad of fur and fat on their bottoms.
Now that eighty per cent of Australia’s eucalypt forests have been cleared, koalas are once again a threatened species.
JH
THE COATHANGER
Although Uluru and the Opera House have, to a large extent, replaced the Sydney Harbour Bridge as the most recognisable Aussie icons—the history of the Coathanger is still a big part of Sydney’s psyche.
A bridge from Dawes Point to Milson’s Point was first proposed by Francis Greenway in 1815 and in the 1820s ‘Commodore’ Billy Blue ran his ferry across the stretch of water the bridge now spans.
After World War I, the plans were made by Dr J.C. Bradfield and officers of the New South Wales Department of Public Works. In 1922, the contract went to Dorman Long and Co of Middlesbrough in the UK and construction began in 1924.
Six million rivets were used in the construction and 800 homes were demolished to make way for the approaches. Sixteen workers died during the building of the bridge. In 1991, author Peter Corris wrote a murder mystery, Wet Graves, using those deaths as his subject.
The decision to build the bridge, which was so obviously needed, was not welcomed by one and all. The Country Party complained about the expense and said it was no good to their constituency because farmers couldn’t use it to get produce to market. Lord Shelbourne called it ‘an unnecessary monstrosity and great waste of money’. The Bulletin said it was ‘built prematurely at wicked cost on borrowed money’.
