by Carol Baxter
As she looked longingly at the musicians and other guests, he started talking about his route. He droned on and on—he evidently planned many stops between England and Australia—but the noise prevented her from hearing him clearly. At last, he admitted defeat and asked if she would have tea with him the following afternoon at the Authors’ Club in Whitehall. Relieved to be free from his pestering, she agreed to meet him and returned to mingling with London’s artistes.
In the distinguished tranquillity of the Authors’ Club the following day, Bill described his plans again and showed her a map of his route. Although she couldn’t provide much useful information, she now listened with interest. Bill said that his choice of plane was a two-seat Avro Avian biplane, an aircraft with parallel upper and lower wings or planes, as they were called, hence the term biplane. It was classified as light because its maximum take-off weight was less than 12,000 pounds, and it was designed and built for aeroplane clubs and private owners. Of course, it would need modifications for the long haul to Australia: larger fuel tanks, for example. However, he would be able to maintain it himself during the journey, which was critical. Many of the landing fields on his route would be nothing more than that—fields.
As she listened, she noticed a serious omission. Nothing concrete seemed to have been done: no plane had been ordered, no maps purchased or permits obtained, no sponsorship locked in. She asked him point blank when he was leaving London. The sorry story trickled out. He didn’t have the money and his father wouldn’t help him because he thought it a crazy idea.
By this time, she had had her own crazy idea. She had realised that Bill was a dreamer who lacked the practicality to put his ideas into action—a minion used to taking orders rather than the master who gave them. He needed a partner, someone who could listen to his plans, put his ideas on paper, make lists of what needed to be done, and implement them. Not only did she know such a person, she had heard him mention that he was planning to fly a two-seat aircraft.
‘If I can raise the money,’ she began tentatively, ‘can I come with you? I have to go back to Australia and I would much sooner fly back than go by boat.’
Bill looked startled. Then he tossed a seemingly endless list of objections at her: the extra weight and its effect on petrol consumption; the dangers of plane travel; the risks they faced in politically unstable countries; the arduous conditions in an open cockpit biplane; and the obvious additional problem of her being a woman. He ended by saying that he would, however, accept any donations towards his flight fund if she was willing to offer them.
‘No go, no money,’ she told him firmly.
Stalemate.
They eyed each other. Bill was the first to waver. Chubbie wasn’t surprised. He was smart enough to recognise that he had little to lose. If she succeeded in raising the money, his dream would come to fruition. If she didn’t, he was no worse off. The only problem might be the threat to his sense of masculinity when his RAF mates discovered he was contemplating taking a woman on his flight.
When Bill opened his mouth, his tone was one of extreme reluctance. But he said that critical word: ‘Yes’.
Soon afterwards they went to Stanfords, the travel emporium in Charing Cross Road. Although Bill had already planned his route to Australia, he needed to purchase strip maps and employ an experienced navigator to mark his courses and distances. They entered a large sunny room smelling of ink and crisp new paper. Maps of every imaginable form filled the room, mostly loose sheets of paper, but they could also see wall-mounted linen maps and spinning globes. Atlases and surveys, guidebooks and travel memoirs lined the polished shelves. It was an international traveller’s Aladdin’s Cave, a delicious taste of their adventures to come.
As Bill explained his requirements, he described their route. He intended to follow the exhaust trail of Dennis Rooke, who had recently attempted to fly the first light plane to Australia but had been forced to abandon the endeavour in India.
Just hearing the place names made Chubbie’s blood fizz with excitement. She had already memorised the route. From Croydon aerodrome they would cross the Channel and head to romantic Paris. Then they would fly above the castles and vineyards and farming lands of France and Italy and over the Mediterranean to the sandy wastes of Libya. From there they would follow the Imperial Airways route that hugged the North African coast until it reached the land of the Pharaohs. They would cross the biblical lands of the Middle East to India then travel through the exotic Far East to Port Darwin on the northern Australian coast.
Bill had told her that Rooke’s wasn’t the shortest route to Australia. That honour fell to the Great Circle route, which crossed central Europe, south-east Russia, Afghanistan and the Khyber Pass to India. His friend Bert Hinkler, an Australian aviator, was soon to tackle the Great Circle route in an attempt to beat the England-to-India record. But most aviators thought it too hazardous because of its high mountains and dangerous weather conditions. Bill wasn’t attempting to set a speed record—his intention was to prove that light planes provided a reliable means of travel over long distances—so he was happy to follow Rooke’s safer course. At least Rooke had successfully reached India, where the two routes joined.
Stanfords said that the marked-up maps would cost £40. When Chubbie pulled out the money and handed it over, it acted as the seal for their verbal contract. Afterwards, as she held the precious paper receipt, she felt as if she was holding the ticket to a new life.
She sent cables to her husband and mother saying, ‘Flying back with a well-known aviator. See you soon.’ The return cables were almost identical and unsurprising: ‘Return by boat immediately. Have cabled fare.’
She was delighted. More money. She had already brought funds from Australia to cover her return journey. And she still had her emergency fund, cash she hadn’t needed to spend because of Keith’s allowance. Now she had two more fares to add to the flight’s treasury. She sent them pleading letters, explaining that she would never again have such an opportunity. In the end, to her astonishment, they agreed to her plans.
After collecting their maps, Bill took her to meet his parents. His father, Edward, was a retired engineer while his mother, Maud, was a strong-minded eccentric whom Bill adored. Maud had written a successful book for housewives, Electric Cooking, Heating, Cleaning, etc., which had brought her financial independence. This pragmatic streak was counterbalanced by a passionate interest in spiritualism. She spent most of her time assisting the Mission of Flowers charitable organisation. She donned a nun’s veil and called herself Sister Red Rose, a tribute to their family name of Lancaster and its historical allegiances.
Bill’s parents were shaken—indeed scandalised—when he told them about their plans. Was their son, a married man with two children, really travelling halfway around the world with another woman? And what did his wife think?
Chubbie had already learnt by this time that Bill had a wife and two young daughters. Bill called her Kiki, although she was actually Annie Maud, yet another woman named after Lord Tennyson’s Maud, the heroine of his wildly popular 1855 poem. Bill said that Kiki wasn’t concerned, that she hoped the trip would rid him of his wanderlust and allow him to settle down. Chubbie later organised to meet Kiki so she could be sure of his wife’s approval before the flight commenced.
Meanwhile, for Bill’s parents, the fact that Chubbie was heading home to her husband made the venture slightly more palatable. And they were impressed when they saw the maps. Still, Maud told her twenty-nine-year-old son that she would consent to his flight only if he used his plane to distribute religious tracts over heathen countries. Bill explained that he couldn’t carry such a weighty bundle so they agreed she would dispatch the tracts in advance and he would distribute them during his journey. Although nothing eventually came of her plans, when Bill and Chubbie needed more money in the final weeks of their preparations, it was Maud who came to their rescue.
Chubbie was amazed at the costs of such an expedition. It seemed to eat al
l their cash. As she later explained to her female supporters, it was like a dressmaker’s bill: you estimated that a frock would cost a certain amount to be made and then discovered, when the bill came in, that you’d forgotten those little extras like buttons and fabric lining.
For an international flight, maps weren’t their only additional expense. They had to purchase passports and pay for landing permits and leave deposits for telegrams that would alert other governments of their imminent arrival. They also had to buy flying kit. Fortunately, Burberrys gave them a fifty per cent discount on their flying gear.
Their largest expense was the Avro Avian, which was advertised as costing £750. A.V. Roe & Co. gave them a big discount on it, however, recognising the publicity value of their flight. Nonetheless, they still had to hand over a considerable sum of money.
To obtain the necessary funds, Chubbie had contacted those who previously promised support for Bill’s flight. Most now offered excuses instead of money. So she tramped London’s streets buttonholing wealthy Australian businessmen—including rich cattle king Sir Sidney Kidman—and others with an Australian connection, begging for sponsorship. She approached London’s Daily Express, which agreed to provide funds in return for cabled reports. Her husband’s newspaper and the Australian Sun newspaper chain signed up for the same arrangement. Obtaining a few pounds here and the occasional fifty there, she scraped up just enough money to cover the basic costs of their flight.
As she discussed the venture with potential sponsors, she discovered the key to opening their wallets: while people were politely interested in Bill’s planned flight, they were fascinated to learn that she, a woman, was to accompany him. No woman had ever flown such a long distance before, either as a pilot or as a passenger, so if they reached Australia her participation alone would put their names in the record books. It wasn’t long before she saw the irony. While Bill had been reluctant to accept her proposition, preferring her money to her companionship, it turned out that it was her involvement that served as the money magnet. Without her, his flight would never have got off the ground.
In addition to obtaining money, she kept the press abreast of their plans. Bill’s friend Bert Hinkler, who had long wanted to fly to Australia, never sought publicity; however, as the wife of a journalist, Chubbie fully appreciated its value.
The press announced their imminent flight in August 1927 and published updates over the next few weeks as she and Bill provided new press releases. The newspapers added their own headlines, most focusing on her own participation—‘Flight to Australia: First Lady Passenger’ and ‘Woman’s Flight to Australia’ among them. The press knew what would draw their readers’ attention.
As the clock ticked down towards their planned departure date—25 September—they attended meetings with petrol and oil companies, who agreed to ship free fuel supplies to the stops along the route and offered bonuses in the event of a successful journey. Every day she went through her lists, crossing off one item after another. Her many tasks included making sure they had all the necessary landing permits—landing in a country without a permit could land them in a prison cell, particularly in places that were hostile to the British.
Bill had initially planned for two planes to make the flight, the second carrying two RAF pilots. If something went wrong with one of the planes—a distinct possibility on such a long haul—the other plane could conduct a rescue mission or obtain the necessary parts or assistance. However, the cost of two planes proved prohibitive and the RAF authorities refused to grant leave to the other pilots. By mid September they were down to one plane and a much riskier journey. Still, it wasn’t enough to deter Chubbie, even though she had never been up in an aeroplane.
She had admitted early on to her lack of aviation experience, saying that her motivation for accompanying him was that the trip sounded like a great lark. But the closer they came to their departure date, the more Bill realised that it would be best if he didn’t begin a 12,000-mile trip with a passenger who had no real comprehension of what was involved. She might suffer air-sickness or vertigo, or such terror that she endangered herself and everyone around her.
‘Look here,’ he said to her, ‘you had better have a flight somewhere. Learn a bit about it so you don’t go putting your foot through the wing.’ He approached his friend Neville Stack, who with Bernard Leete had flown the first light plane to India, and asked if he would take her up for a spin.
Chubbie looked around at Croydon’s vast aerodrome with its office buildings, hangars, fuel bowsers and aircraft of every imaginable size and type, from large imposing passenger planes to feisty little single seaters. Distant planes hummed as they waited to take off, then the sound rose to a roar as they sped past. Noise and activity surrounded her while petrol fumes made the air shimmer in the sunlight. And men were everywhere—in pilots’ uniforms, mechanics’ overalls, business suits. The only women she could see were airline passengers or busy office girls.
She climbed onto the wing of the RAF biplane and over the cockpit edge, settling herself into her own circular roofless compartment. Soon the propeller spun and the engine growled, surprisingly loud at such a close proximity. The plane vibrated around her. Then it bumped across the field and turned into the wind. The gentle buffeting from the propeller-driven air-stream became a confronting turbulence as the plane picked up speed. The roar was almost deafening. Finally the plane lifted off the ground, leaving her feeling strangely heavy and weightless at the same time.
As they soared into the sky, she peered over the side. The city below them reduced in size as if she were peering through the wrong end of binoculars. The higher they flew, the more it resembled a doll’s village. The nearby countryside looked like a crazed chequerboard of greens and yellows, browns and greys. Gossamer-like roads criss-crossed the terrain. Trains trailed puffs of smoke but their whistles couldn’t be heard above the brain-numbing drone of the engine.
She felt not a qualm, not a hint of air-sickness, just pure joy. She couldn’t wait to commence their grand adventure.
Chapter Two
Bill hadn’t really expected Chubbie to succeed where he had failed. A woman? A housewife? Of course, female business success wasn’t completely unknown to him because of his mother’s accomplishments. However, his mother was surely the exception rather than the rule and his engineer father had played a crucial role in her achievements. So he was astonished when the pint-sized Australian managed to line up sponsors and generate press attention. And he was delighted when their filling coffers signalled that his dream flight might actually take to the air.
Compared with Chubbie’s previously humdrum existence, his own life had been eventful—until recent years. Born in Birmingham on 14 February 1898, he had been a thrill-seeking boy who needed to be kept physically active. He had just turned sixteen when his parents dispatched him to Australia to gain experience on the land. He headed to the Riverina district of New South Wales, a vast expanse of grass-covered plains, where he worked as a jackaroo and learnt how to manage a pastoral station. The work was tough: long days mustering livestock and mending fences, nights sleeping under the stars around a campfire. Any pretensions to British snobbery were soon booted out of him. His brother, Jack, joined him there two years later. Jack had worked as a Westinghouse Electrical Company apprentice, so they established an electrician business in Hay. The physical, practical and problem-solving skills Bill learnt during his two years in Australia would prove an invaluable source of knowledge when he later became a pilot.
Six months after Bill was exiled to the antipodes, the Great War began. Like most adventure-seeking lads, he saw war as the stuff of dreams and legends. In his imaginary world, it was a real-life tale of heroes and villains, of good battling evil, of glory and self-sacrifice in a noble cause.
In mid 1916, just after Jack turned seventeen, they headed to Sydney and enlisted in the Australian Imperial Forces, lying about their ages so that Jack appeared eligible for war service. As drivers in the
Field Company Engineers, they sailed for England in November 1916. During the voyage, Bill ingloriously contracted mumps and was hospitalised in Cape Town for a month.
Reaching England in February 1917, he joined Jack at the Perham Down training camp near Salisbury. When they saw fighter planes wheeling and swooping across Britain’s skies—and English lasses fluttering their eyelashes at the swaggering flyboys—they volunteered to join the Australian Flying Corps. On 1 November, after four and a half months’ training, they officially joined the corps and were seconded to 80 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, to support the Allies in the ongoing war.
Bill knew that he was never considered more than a fair pilot to his instructors. Nonetheless, they appreciated his courage and fearlessness. These two attributes were especially useful for wartime pilots who faced death every time they climbed into a cockpit—more because of their own plane’s shortcomings than the skills of their adversaries.
His first job was to ferry fighting planes across to France. It ended in January 1918 when he crashed in a blinding English snowstorm. Admitted to hospital with concussion, he suffered ongoing neurological problems: headaches, nightmares, tremors, stammered speech. ‘Will never be of any use flying again,’ was the medical board’s dismissive opinion six months later. As there were no available ground positions with the Australian Flying Corps in the United Kingdom, and as he wanted to remain near his family rather than return to Australia, his service was terminated on 14 October. A month later, the war ended.
His father pulled some strings and obtained a temporary RAF commission for him. He spent the next year at an aviation depot in London. Demobilised in February 1920, he walked away with his war-widow bride, Kiki, the honorary rank of captain, and an opportunity to undertake a two-year university degree. He chose dentistry.
