by P Fitzsimons
They didn’t know much about planes, but couldn’t for the life of them see how this speeding monster could possibly slow in time. On the balcony of the nearby Grand Pacific Hotel, many members of the ruling aristocracy who had decided not to face the discomfort of being in the pressing muskiness of the crowd below, now, almost as one, stopped sipping their gins and tonic. How could this chap possibly make it?
To try to slow the plane, Smithy began to swerve it as much as possible from side to side, to take a few miles an hour off each time. Two hundred yards…150 yards…100 yards…the plane was still hurtling forward at such pace it was a certainty there was going to be grief.
Fifty yards…25 yards and still going fast…It’s going to hit the trees!
And so it would have if, at the last possible instant, Kingsford Smith hadn’t pulled his control wheel down hard to the left and given the rudder a boot while opening up the taps on the starboard motor to violently alter the entire direction of the plane. For an instant, as the left wing dipped and the wheels skidded, it looked as if the plane would topple, but then after a screaming, teetering ‘ground-loop’, as aviators called it, the plane settled and stopped, facing directly back towards the way it had come. Kingsford Smith had done it!
Pandemonium broke out. In an instant the capacity of the crowd to control itself was shattered and people rushed forward through the overwhelmed police cordon to greet the first plane to visit Fiji, and the one which had just made the longest aerial hop on record—3138 miles, non-stop, in thirty-four hours and thirty minutes.45
In the Southern Cross the feeling was overwhelmingly joyous as Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm, Harry Lyon and Jim War…hang on…Where was Jim Warner?
Oh.
Oh dear.
Jammed right into the back of the plane for safety’s sake, at Smithy’s request, the still naked-from-the-waist-down Warner had had the misfortune, in all the shocks and bumps of the difficult landing, to have fallen through the fuselage’s thin fabric covering and, as later revealed by author Ian Mackersey, had been knocked out cold once he hit the turf. Fortunately for him, a nurse rushed forward from the madding crowd, covered him with her cape and slowly brought him around.46
In the meantime, Kingsford Smith, ever the showman, had emerged from the plane—which was later found to have just 30 gallons of fuel left in its tanks47—and was smiling and waving at the throng. As he later recalled: ‘As I stepped out to face the crowd I had a feeling of exaltation, a sense of accomplishment.’48
In all the hullaballoo, a well-dressed gentleman stepped forward and addressed Kingsford Smith.
‘I congratulate you,’ he said. ‘Will you all lunch with me tomorrow?’
‘Yes. Isn’t it?’ Kingsford Smith replied, taking, as he was now getting used to, a wild stab in the dark as to what the gentleman had just said.
Whereupon the man put his mouth closer to the aviator’s ear and said something much louder, but equally incomprehensible.
‘Excuse me,’ Kingsford Smith replied. ‘I didn’t catch your name.’
It was Sir Eyre Hutson, British High Commissioner of the Western Pacific and Governor of Fiji, and he was inviting them to lunch at Government House the following day.
The cheering continued, even as the aviators were at last able to make their way to the nearby Grand Pacific Hotel—with its gorgeous deep-shaded verandas perfect for catching the cooling sea breezes—for some precious rest. Behind them, as the Governor had declared a day of national holiday to celebrate this momentous event, most of the population of Suva was either gathering around or filing past this bizarre thing that had appeared from the skies, this Southern Cross. Among them, one particularly grizzle-haired Fijian, an older man with many tribal scars, who just a few minutes before had been running around and shouting with the best of them in the carnival air of great excitement, had now calmed, and was overheard to ask in his own language: ‘But what are they all doing this for?’49
Back in Australia, it was the Attorney-General, the Right Honourable John Latham who, in the temporary absence of Prime Minister Stanley Bruce, rose to break the wonderful news, his voice ringing proudly through the august chamber: ‘It is with pride and pleasure that I announce to the House that Captain Kingsford Smith and his companions [have] arrived safely at Suva…’50
In response, the House broke into applause, and there were so many resounding cheers and cries of ‘Bravo!’ ‘Bravo!’ ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Hear, Hear! Hear, Hear!’ that it was a few moments before the Attorney-General could continue.
‘On behalf of the government and the members of this House and of the people of Australia, I take this opportunity to congratulate them upon their wonderful and gallant exploit…It has been decided by the government to make a grant of £5,000 to Captain Kingsford Smith and his associates, as a recognition of a feat of aviation of which Australians are proud…’
‘Hear, Hear! Hear, Hear!’
An indication of the general mood of bipartisan celebration was that his words were promptly seconded by the newly installed Opposition leader, James Scullin. ‘On behalf of those honourable members who sit on this side of the House, I desire to endorse most cordially the congratulatory statements of the Attorney-General, Mr Latham. I agree with the honourable gentleman that the flight of Captain Kingsford Smith and his gallant companions has many wonderful features. It is a performance by Australians of which Australia ought to, and does, feel proud. I read recently the statement of an American writer that the six leading flight men of the world all hail from this country. That is a distinction of which we have every reason to feel proud…‘51
(Exactly. And who was Charles Lindbergh when he was at home, anyway?)
In short order, this same Australian government, which had all but totally ignored Kingsford Smith and Ulm over the previous twelve months, now deployed the destroyer Anzac to leave Port Stephens, north of Newcastle, and head into the Pacific, positioning itself along the route between Brisbane and Suva. As Prime Minister Bruce, now present once more, told the parliament, ‘It is anticipated that at the moment when the flyers pass, the destroyer will be about 700 miles off the coast of Australia, and will be able to keep in wireless communication with Captain Kingsford Smith throughout his trip and render him a great deal of assistance.’52
Bravo! Bravo!
In Arabella Street, most of the neighbourhood—cheering, laughing and crying—seemed to have gathered in the Kingsford Smith living room, treating the beaming Catherine and William as what they were—parents of the most celebrated man in Australia.
In Mosman, meanwhile, Charles Ulm’s aged mother was taking it a lot more quietly. She had been on the point of emotional collapse, right up to the point when she heard that her boy was safe, and now it was all she could do to quietly sip some tea.53 On the streets outside her door, as on streets all over Australia, newsboys were bellowing the wonderful news, and selling out of specially printed extra editions of their papers.
There is sleep, deep sleep, the sleep of the dead, the sleep of the damned, and then there is the sleep of an aviator who has flown nearly 6000 miles in just a few days, so far, so fast, that despite his extreme fatigue his natural body clock awakes him at midnight, local time.
So it was for Charles Kingsford Smith on that first night in Fiji. Ulm awoke at much the same time and after the two of them had spent an hour or so opening and reading the hundreds of congratulatory cablegrams that had been flooding in from all parts of the world—including one from Australian Prime Minister Stanley Bruce saying, ‘Australia looks forward to welcoming you on the termination of your long and daring achievement’54—they decided to go and have a look at the Southern Cross. Was it being looked after, as promised by the local authorities? It was too important a question to be left until morning. They needed to know now and, wrapped in sarongs, they walked the short distance from the hotel to where they had left the plane, at one end of Albert Park.
At least they tried to. In fact, when they g
ot to within 50 yards of the plane, which was looking rather ghostly in the soft tropical moonlight, four uniformed Fijian men with rifles appeared. Though these men spoke no English, they were able to use international sign language to indicate that if the two white men cared to keep coming on and get anywhere near the plane, there was every chance they would have their heads blown off.
Ulm and Kingsford Smith could not have been more delighted, and returned to their hotel to get some more sleep, mightily relieved.
Even beyond Australian shores, the news of the Southern Cross’s landing was creating major headlines, particularly in America and Britain, as it seemed as if another of the world’s major natural barriers was now on the edge of being conquered.
But just who would be credited with the conquering? Under the original terms of the contract that Warner and Lyon had signed at Charles Ulm’s behest on the evening before departure, their services were not required beyond Fiji, and they were to be given the money to simply disappear on a ship back to America. After all, from Suva onwards, the east coast of Australia would be a hard target to miss, so there was a lot less need for a navigator and radio man. And yet, once both the Australian and American press got wind of the plan, the pressure built for the Americans to remain included to the end, something that Lyon and Warner were keen on themselves.
Having broken the back of the journey, it seemed to the Americans that it would be a great pity to be let go now, and both of them said so at a meeting they held on their second night in Fiji. Ulm tried a compromise, offering the Americans a trip by ship to Australia, so they could arrive in time for some of the receptions and so on. Unfortunately, he put this proposal at a time when all of them had just returned from nearly a full day’s round of celebrations, including a lunch, civic reception, two cocktail parties and a mayoral ball, all of which had involved the consumption of a great deal of alcohol. This meant that, at midnight, Harry Lyon’s natural restraint—never the particular feature of his character that he would hang his hat on—was at a rather lowish point.
So Ulm wanted them to sneak to Australia, did he, and arrive after all the hoopla had died down? What kind of damned chumps did he think they were?!?! Something snapped. Grabbing Ulm, Lyon pushed him against the wall and was about to follow this up with the knockout blow, when Kingsford Smith stepped in.55
‘Harry!’
Smithy, asserting his authority, told Lyon to get a grip and Ulm that he wanted the Americans to come on to Australia. And that was that. An uneasy peace descended, as both men bowed to Kingsford Smith’s wishes and Ulm agreed that a fresh contract would be drawn up.56
The following morning, Ulm organised that contract and then cabled reports of his adventures to his newspaper contacts in Australia. (And to judge by a newspaper report appearing the following day, Ulm had rather changed his view of Lyon. ‘If we were given all the navigators in the world for the next flight,’ he told the New York Times, ‘we would look for Lieutenant Lyon.’57) Meanwhile, Smithy flew the Southern Cross, with only a small amount of fuel on board, out of the tiny Albert Park to a beach on Naselai Island in the Rewa River Delta, about 20 miles to the north-east, where he was joined by Ulm, Warner and Lyon in the afternoon.
This beach was essentially the Fijian equivalent of Barking Sands—a long, firm, flattish stretch that would allow the Southern Cross to gain sufficient speed to take off even when fully loaded. Alas, when the Fijian government steamer Pioneer attempted to land twenty-five drums holding some 900 gallons of petrol on that same beach, the sea proved too rough for the steamer to get close to the shore, and it was reluctantly decided to leave it to the many willing locals to individually wrestle and roll the drums ashore with their wooden canoes as the frothy waves burst around them.58
In the meantime, the aviators were offered the chance to spend a comfortable night sleeping on the steamer, just with one little…ah…rider: one of them should stay ashore with the plane, which was a rather less comfortable prospect.
‘My election to this post,’ Jim Warner later recorded drolly, ‘was practically unanimous. I won by the majority of something like seventy-five per cent.’59
That night, Warner was initiated into the Nakelo village and drank of the sacred yangonna ceremonial drink, also known as kava.60 They proved to be a very gracious people.
We are the people of the Nakelo village, who live on the island of Naselai. Our sacred ancestors came here 40,000 years ago. Our legends tell of magic and powerful things, but never anything as magic or as powerful as this Wanga Vuk, bird-ship, this thing that can even stay up in the night, suspended from the top part of the moon and putting a shadow on the rest.61 As near as we can see, the man with the big smile, who is laughing all the time, is the chief who controls this bird-ship. His name is ‘Smizzy’ and he is a good man who comes in peace. All the white men seem to look to him. We like him. Our chief Ratu Avakuki, is very proud because this Smizzy has accepted a gift of a walking stick from him.62 And now it is for us to farewell him and his men, as they depart in their bird-ship across the seas…
Finally, on mid-afternoon of Friday, 8 June 1928, at a time when the tide was low and their beach airstrip was near its widest, all was in readiness, with the only quibble being that as a long-time mariner, Harry Lyon was of the view that leaving on a Friday was bad luck.63 He was ignored. Before the flyers left, however, a ceremony of farewell took place. With the crew making ready to get into the Southern Cross, the crowd suddenly made way.
Coming through the grouped natives appeared a vision of loveliness—four comely and bare-breasted young Fijian women, with hibiscus and frangipani flowers in their hair, each bearing a wooden bowl of the local drink of yangonna, which—despite the fact that it looked like brownish, muddy water—the flyers were invited to drink. As was explained to them by chief Ratu Avakuki, this was part of a ceremony dating back centuries, and was designed to ensure their safe passage to their destination. It was only given to visiting chiefs. (What he didn’t explain was that as part of the process of preparing this drink from the root of the yangonna plant, those same young maidens would have chewed upon pieces of it, then removed them from their mouths and placed them a ceremonial bowl, before water was added.)
Deeply moved by the offering, the four Western men drank the yangonna—it made their tongues and lips feel numb—and then, through an interpreter, Kingsford Smith thanked the locals for their kindness and assured them they would never forget them.64
‘Thanks for your hospitality and enthusiastic welcome,’ Kingsford Smith called out to them, even after boarding the plane and preparing to depart. After the engines were started, making a thunderous noise the gathered locals had never heard before—like three storms all at once—they could see ‘Smizzy’ listen intently before he nodded his head to the other one sitting beside him.65 All was good.
And then, this time with plasticine stuffed into their ears to try to deaden the noise,66 they were off! The Southern Cross lifted off Naselai Beach on the button of 2.52 pm, leaving behind the magical green isles of athletic and friendly men, stunning women, palm trees, endless beautiful beaches and timeless hospitality. On that beach, the locals stayed staring, unspeaking, until the last speck of the plane disappeared in the distance.67
Next stop—the Australian mainland!
Though this was undoubtedly the least challenging part of their journey in terms of navigation—as instead of seeking out a dot in the ocean as previously, this time they were the dot in the ocean, heading to a massive target that they simply couldn’t miss so long as they kept heading broadly west—there remained a huge distance to travel in a plane that had already received a fair old workout in the previous five days. By Lyon’s calculations, Brisbane was on a bearing of south-west by west 236.25 degrees, 1756 miles away, but after what they had already been through, this seemed only about half as daunting as the Honolulu to Suva trip had been. As Smithy wrote in a note to his co-pilot Ulm, ‘It is really remarkable how one’s air mind expands. A few ye
ars ago a seventeen hundred mile flight over water was enormous. Now it is the shortest of our three hops.’68 Practically nothing!
Little did they know, however, just what kind of a workout remained…
For even as they started out from Fiji, the Pacific was conspiring to have one last shot at bringing the Southern Cross to heel. On the path ahead of them, the sun had been belting down all day on the ocean, causing a lot of hot moisture to rise into the air. As that vapour rose into the higher realms, and began to condense, the heat from that moisture was released, causing a hot updraft and a heavy in-rush of cooler air below, as a low-pressure cell was formed. The winds rushing over the hot ocean surface now increased the rate of evaporation, causing a greater hot updraft, a lower air pressure, and even greater winds, which then released more heat…and so on. A vicious cycle was created, and was soon not far off from turning into a full-blown cyclone.
Gloriously unaware, the Southern Cross flew on towards Brisbane. Not that everything was going perfectly, for all that. Just a couple of hours after they took off, a note came forward from Lyon: E.I.C. out of action.
Bastard of a thing! And the worst of it, they realised, was that they had no-one to blame but themselves. While in Suva, they had received a long cable from the makers of the compass giving precise instructions on how their earth inductor compass should be serviced but…well…what with the speeches and their fatigue…and accepting the hospitality of the locals…they had clean forgotten about the whole thing. It was the only mistake they felt they had made on the trip so far, which was galling, but it was far better that it had happened at this stage rather than earlier on. For the moment, all they could do was to rely on their regular steering compass, though Lyon, for one, had little confidence that it would steer true given the inherent inconsistencies of using a magnetic compass for accurate headings for long distances over featureless water at night in turbulent air. Still, they could only keep going and hope that either Lyon could fix the compass, or their other methods of navigation would suffice.