By any measure, 60 years in aviation is a long time.
The first aircraft to fly in Australia, unsurprisingly, was a balloon, built in England and flown by an Englishman, in 1858. An Australian, George Taylor, flew a glider at Narrabeen Beach near Sydney 51 years later; and just after that, imported powered biplanes first appeared. John Duigan constructed and flew the first Australian-built aeroplane in 1910.
It was a time of rapid change that must have amazed those who lived through those years. The world was getting smaller, fast, driven by technology that progressed from lighter-than-air designs, to heavier-than-air aircraft that derive their lift from reaction forces against fixed wings, generated by horizontal motion.
In our time
Australian Flying was first published in 1963. By then, waves of aerospace technology had ensued, driven by competitive military requirements over two world wars, growing public demand for comfort and safety; and plain-old instinctive human fascination with going fast and flying high.
The first Qantas 707 had been delivered just four years earlier. It must have felt like the whole country had been uprooted, and repositioned closer to Europe and North America. At the end of 1947, it took 63 hours to fly Sydney-London on a Lockheed L1049-C Constellation. By 1960, the flight time was down to 33 hours, and reduced by half on other routes, including to San Francisco.
General aviation was flying ahead too. At the end of World War II, first year, there were 1787 aircraft on the register, and one year later there were 1936; 90% of which were non-airline aircraft. By fifth birthday, there were 3355 civilian aircraft flying in this country.
