AUSTRALIA’S LONE EAGLE
ON MAY 1, 1933, THE HISTORIC NORTHERN ITALIAN CITY OF FLORENCE CAME TO A STANDSTILL FOR A STATE FUNERAL WITH FULL MILITARY HONORS.
At dictator Benito Mussolini’s behest, its citizens gathered to honor a distinguished airman who had crashed to his death earlier in the year amid the snowcapped peaks of the Pratomagno Mountains southeast of the city. Remarkably, the somber pageantry around the massive horsedrawn hearse was not to venerate a fellow countryman. It was for a small, unassuming Australian, a pilot whose incredible achievements as a long-distance flier had earned him a special place in Italian hearts. His name was Bert Hinkler.
Of Prussian immigrant descent, Herbert John Louis “Bert” Hinkler was born to industrious artisan parents on December 8, 1892, at Bundaberg, Queensland, in eastern Australia. Fascinated by aviation from an early age, the teenage Hinkler devised his own aviette, or early birdman outfit, a pair of wings with arm sockets that he slipped on like a coat before sprinting wildly around the countryside flapping his arms in a hopeless attempt to get airborne. Meanwhile, he studied aviation theory through correspondence courses.
In 1911 Hinkler built his first glider, based on published diagrams of the Blériot XI but with the pilot in a prone position, and in it made an unsuccessful flight attempt at nearby Mon Repos beach. He subsequently modified the glider, incorporating his mother’s ironing board for the prone pilot. A short manned flight ending in a hard landing convinced the would-be aviator that the glider would never be capable of carrying an engine.
Things started looking up for Hinkler in 1912 when he talked his way into a mechanic’s job with the itinerant American pilot Arthur Burr
