Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men

by P Fitzsimons

  What could they do?

  Only the best they could. After starting a fire to try to clear more of the turpentine shrub, and provide a smoke signal to anyone who might miraculously be looking for them—even though no-one would expect them to be in this spot, because of the short cut they had taken—they put the one spare tube they had in the flat tyre. On this morning, they tried again. And again and again. And now, one more time…

  Engine at full throttle, Keith Anderson gunned it across the sand as Bobby Hitchcock held on, and prayed while being bounced furiously as the wheels jumped and bumped from one turpentine stump to the next…getting faster…nearly lifting…

  PHHHT!

  With a sickening finality, the tyre blew again, and the Kookaburra came to a shuddering halt in the oppressive silence of the desert.

  The sun beat down, sapping them.

  They did not have a puncture repair kit.

  Were they going to die out here?

  Not without a very big fight they weren’t. In desperation to stay alive long enough for help to arrive, after thirty-six hours of maddening thirst they tried drinking their own urine, with variations of oil, petrol, and methylated spirits from the wretched compass mixed in. (Which was the only bloody thing the compass turned out to be good for.) And when that was gone, they played their last card.

  Though exhausted and desperate, they were still thinking straight enough to reason that their one hope of salvation was to dig down far enough to get to the water table below them. And so, slowly, laboriously, they began to dig. There had to be a chance they would find water if they could just keep going.

  Charles Ulm’s diary:

  Heat, flies, mosquitoes, light fires, pull down trees, pull up grass for smoke, walk for water, eat a few snails, drink water and a very thin cup of gruel, listen to radio, turn generator until every ounce of energy is gone; then lie down to be eaten alive by mosquitoes—that is our day! When will it end?

  It was just a small article, and it appeared in the Friday, 12 April 1929 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald:

  KEITH ANDERSON OVERDUE

  When this edition went to press, there was no news of the Kookaburra, which was being flown by Lieutenant Keith Anderson to Wyndham…

  For most of the newspaper’s readership, the report no doubt warranted little attention, lost as it was in the huge coverage devoted to the continuing search for the Southern Cross. But for Bon Hilliard, already worried sick because there had been no cable from Keith the evening before to say he had arrived safely, it was like a stab to the heart. Seeing it written there in black and white, made it all too real—Keith and Bobby Hitchcock were really missing, themselves lost in the wilderness.

  It had taken a while, but at last they were on their way. In Sydney, HMAS Albatross, with its six RAAF amphibian craft on board, now went steaming through Sydney Heads, on its way to Western Australia to join the search. Yes, it had taken just under a fortnight to get the ship and her crew organised, but these things couldn’t be rushed. And at least the Federal government was seen to be doing something…

  At Coffee Royal, it was obvious that the dreadful weather that had made them miss Wyndham, and land in this godforsaken place was the last burst of the wet season, and they were now at the beginning of the dry season because since that time it had barely rained with intent. All they were left with was this dreadful sweltering, dripping heat. It was intolerable, appalling, debilitating and…

  And what was that? Another plane? Yes, over there, to the south-east. And of course, just as the search planes had ever done, just as they would always do, the plane veered away to the east. Kingsford Smith and Litchfield were at the top of the hill, keeping a desultory fire going.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ the pilot urgently told the exhausted navigator, ‘let’s stick everything green on the fire. This bird may possibly see us.’25

  And so, with their last gasping reserves of energy, they managed to get the fire roaring once more, with thick, billowing white smoke resulting.

  And then, as they watched—Smithy boring holes through his binoculars—the plane changed course and came straight towards them. It had seen them! It was coming lower! G-AUHW it said in big letters under the wings. It was the Canberra! They were saved! Kingsford Smith, for one, burst into tears.26

  There they were! In the cockpit of the Canberra, flying at 2000 feet, there was wild rejoicing, even as John Stannage—who had met Kingsford Smith eighteen months before in San Francisco—was sending out the message that a few blinks of the eye later was picked up in Darwin before being relayed to the Amalgamated Wireless radio station at La Perouse in Sydney, and soon thereafter was reverberating around Australia: Found! Found! Found!27

  Even more wondrous, as the Canberra descended and began to circle, they could see two raggedy figures staggering down a hill from which a thin line of smoke was ascending, and two more figures coming out from under the shade of the plane’s wing.28 That made four, so they were all all right! Twelve days lost, but all right!

  On the ground, compounding their joy at finally being found, was the fact that from the window of the Canberra’s cockpit soon came a few basic supplies and the four members of the crew fell upon the cans of corned beef like ravenous dogs, tearing off the tops and pushing the food into their mouths. The relief! The sheer gut-filling pleasure of it!

  From the plane now dropped a message: Back tomorrow. With which, the Canberra flew away, though only after Holden had taken it up to 5000 feet to get an absolutely certain fix on where they were in this wilderness, so he could be sure of making his way back to it.

  At home in Arabella Street, the mood was so grim as they sat around waiting for the glad tidings that didn’t come that Catherine told her daughter to switch off the radio they had been glued to for the last week. Elsie was rising to do just that, when an excited announcer broke into the shipping news, with the newsflash.

  ‘I have some wonderful news for you…’ he began.29

  They had found the Southern Cross and all four men appeared to be without injury! Chilla was okay!

  Ferries tooted their whistles as the news spread; motorists beeped their horns, and such was the joy that at the Sydney Stock Exchange where things had been quite troubled of late, business briefly ceased.30

  ‘This is a great day for Mother and Father,’31 Leofric told a Sydney Morning Herald journalist a short time later, even as at Longueville his father had hung a Union Jack from the window of the family home, and put an Australian flag on a bamboo pole in the garden.

  For it was in fact nothing less than a great day for Australia! The boys had been found and would soon be on their way home! In the eastern Sydney suburb of Dover Heights, Charles Ulm’s wife, Jo, was equally thrilled, telling a journalist that at half-past five that morning she had had such a vivid dream—of Charles holding a map and pointing to a spot just north of Derby, telling her they were safe—that she had immediately rung her sister to tell her.32 For his part, Charles Ulm’s father took the opportunity to deride those people he’d heard of lately who’d been saying the whole disappearance had been a stunt to generate publicity. This was extraordinarily ‘ungenerous’ of them, he said.33 All that mattered now was that they were safe.

  And now here they were!

  In Sydney, it was the Evening News that led the way, with front page banner headlines:

  SOUTHERN CROSS FOUND: ALL SAFE

  Captain Holden the Finder.

  Near Port George.

  All Well. HURRAH!34

  From the moment of the discovery of the Southern Cross, things moved quickly. The Canberra returned to Wyndham to a hero’s welcome, and started to gather more serious supplies to be dropped the following day. Returning on the morrow without problem, they were to see a much more cheery crew waving at them this time, and they were delighted to be able to drop four carefully prepared packages, which included mosquito nets, cans of food, hats, soap and even towels. But had they forgotten something? As they watched car
efully, one of the crew on the ground was clearly gouging a message into the mud. Going down closer they tried to make it out—a ‘C’, an ‘I’, a ‘G’…and an ‘S’ made CIGS!

  A quick whip-round and a minute later, the Canberra swooped low and rained cigarettes upon the men on the ground. Another package that tumbled down contained the eighty-five telegrams that had been received at Wyndham overnight, offering salutations, celebrations and congratulations. Australia was cheering, with only one discordant note.

  Keith Anderson and Bob Hitchcock had still not turned up, and had been missing for three days. Where were they and why wasn’t there a greater effort to find them?

  As John Cantor of the Customs House Hotel told the Herald, ‘Their lives are just as valuable to the State as any other lives and, in the circumstances in which they went out, an effort should be made to find them.’

  Cantor was supported in this, the Herald reported, by Mr Arthur V. Hilliard, Anderson’s legal representative. Mr Hilliard said that he could not understand why there was an apparent apathy in the Citizens Rescue Committee concerning plans for the search for the crew of the Kookaburra. ‘Lieutenant Anderson left at short notice to search for his former pals in the Southern Cross. He never for a moment considered his own safety in the search. It may be that he had a misadventure and no time should be lost in organising a search for him.’35

  As concern about Anderson and Hitchcock rose, so too, bit by bit, did details begin to emerge of their trip, each one more worrying than the last. They’d had a faulty compass when they had landed at Broken Hill from Sydney. Apparently, when they left Alice Springs to fly over the hottest, most arid part of Australia, they had been carrying only two bottles of water and a few sandwiches. They had no radio with them. Bobby Hitchcock had been so ill with a case of blood poisoning that he’d had to receive treatment at Alice Springs hospital. They had left no kind of flight plan as to what route they intended to take. Wherever they were, if still alive, it seemed unlikely that they would be able to last long.

  The urgency to find them began to grow. Bowing to growing pressure, the Citizens Rescue Committee contacted Les Holden and asked him to take the Canberra and go to look for the Kookaburra. Meanwhile, two worn-out RAAF de Havilland DH.9A planes left Melbourne bound for Alice Springs so they, too, could join the search.

  At Coffee Royal, still monitoring the radio as they waited for the mud to dry enough that a light plane bringing petrol could land—and they could hopefully fly themselves out—the crew of the Southern Cross was deeply worried by the news that Anderson and Hitchcock were missing. Smithy’s first desperate hope was that they had landed near water, as he knew only too well how forbidding the country to the west of the Overland Telegraph Line was.36

  At last, five days after the Southern Cross had been found, one of Norman Brearley’s pilots by the name of ‘Bertie’ Heath—an old friend of Anderson and Kingsford Smith—managed to land right beside Coffee Royal in a small de Havilland DH.50. It was possible. Before Bertie left, Charles Ulm handed over his logbook with instructions that its contents be cabled to Sydney for exclusive publication in the Sun.37 Heath agreed, took off, and the next day returned with another plane, carrying petrol and oil supplies.

  In the meantime, the mood of several newspapers vis-à-vis the Southern Cross was beginning to harden, with the Daily Guardian leading the way, questioning whether the crew’s situation had really been so dire after all.

  ULM’S TALE: THEY LIVED ON SNAILS AND GRASS ONLY 25 MILES AWAY FROM MISSION!

  TOO WEAK TO MAKE SMOKE SIGNALS, THOUGH PLANES PASSING OVERHEAD SIMPLY WAITED FOR 12 DAYS HEARD EVERYTHING ON WIRELESS; MADE SMITHY GRIN

  ‘For a fortnight,’ it stated archly, the four men ‘have been within easy walking distance of Port George Mission. In fact, the true sensation has been the fever of apprehension of the public, not the actual plight of the flyers. A startling, but happily not tragic, jest has been played on public emotion by circumstance and by the failure or inability of the four missing men to show signals to searching planes which passed and re-passed the locality where the Southern Cross lay unseen…The [searching pilots] are reported as being amazed that at no time were they given any smoke signals from Kingsford Smith and his party.’38

  The truth was, not all the journalists in the Guardian‘s Philip Street offices felt happy about the slant the paper was taking on the story, as it was practically accusing Smithy and Ulm and the others of fabricating the whole thing, but on the other hand they understood.39 The Sun had prospered mightily in recent times with the exclusive deal it had with Kingsford Smith and Ulm as the principal engine that had sold millions of extra papers, and this was the Guardian‘s perfect opportunity to turn things around. Certainly, it was tough on Smithy and Ulm, but all was fair in love and newspaper wars.

  And certainly, the Sun, in many ways, redressed the balance by now publishing the airmen’s ‘exclusive reports’ on their front page, with Ulm’s account of such things as how, when the Canberra arrived overhead, ‘we tore open packages of food like wild beasts’.40 The Sun presented none of the queries and doubts that were being posed by other papers, and simply milked the story for all it was worth—which was plenty, as circulation continued to soar. The Sun focused very little on the fact that Anderson and Hitchcock were still missing. For the Guardian, it was front-page news, the main story of the day.

  There is a visitor for you, Mr Garlick, and here is her card.

  John Garlick, the Chief Civic Commissioner of Sydney and the head of the Citizens Southern Cross Rescue Committee, looked at it and recognised the name immediately. It was Bon Hilliard, the fiancée of Keith Anderson. For all that, he still kept her waiting in an anteroom in the town hall for an hour before receiving her, but finally she could be put off no longer. She was slim, pretty, blue-eyed and furious.

  ‘Was the Canberra out looking for Keith and Bobby Hitchcock yesterday?’ she wanted to know.

  The commissioner had to confess that he wasn’t certain.

  ‘Why aren’t you certain? Aren’t you the one who should be certain, above all?’

  The commissioner, staggered at her anger and upset, tried to detail what he had done to find the missing plane.

  ‘And you should do it, too!’ Bon told him, before leaving.41 The Guardian delighted in reporting the conversation the following day. The Sun ignored it.

  And finally, at Coffee Royal, this was what heaven felt like: sleep under a mosquito net that kept the beggars out, food in their bellies, and the knowledge that they were found and would soon be on their way home. Further lifting their spirits was the knowledge that, after everything the Southern Cross had been through, she was still in good shape. With petrol restored to her, she once again came to life and, with one of her side engines at full throttle, Kingsford Smith was able to turn her round from the spot she had been stuck in for the previous two weeks, and point her in the opposite direction whence she came. When they had landed, Smithy had had no more than 100 yards of free space to work with. Now, courtesy of the work the men had put in over the previous days with the axes and shovels that had also been dropped—and their new-found strength from the food—he had a little over 200 yards of serviceable runway.

  After eighteen days in that godforsaken part of the planet, they were away! In no more than a minute, the mud, the mosquitoes and the monotony of their swampy prison had been left behind, and an hour and a half later, they were in Derby. The joy of landing back in civilisation, however, was tempered by the news that there was still no sign of Anderson and Hitchcock. What was more, there was a telegram waiting for them, from John Cantor, which hit them like a hard punch to the solar plexus:

  The boys sent Keith to look for you. For God’s sake look for him and Bob.42

  And they learned for the first time about the scurrilous attacks that had been made on them by the Guardian. They were appalled and outraged in equal measure—and Kingsford Smith and Ulm quickly cabled instructions to their solicitor in Sydney, E
ric Campbell, to institute legal proceedings against the paper, as well as its printer, Clyde Packer. They sought a total of £20,000 in damages.43

  At least, they learned, the pride of the Qantas fleet, the de Havilland DH.50J Atalanta G-AUHE, was about to leave Brisbane to join the search for Anderson and Hitchcock, and another five decrepit RAAF DH.9A planes had left Laverton. And they wanted to join them immediately.

  Wiser heads prevailed, however, and they were persuaded to get at least a couple of days’ medical attention with proper sleep and rest, while the Southern Cross had work done on her, before they would be in shape to do anything at all.

  Success, at last…

  On the morning of 17 April 1929, Pilot Percy ‘Skipper’ Moody—none other than Smithy’s old flying companion from Royal Flying Corps days, with whom he had taken the salute from the Life Guard in Whitehall—took off from Brisbane’s Eagle Farm aerodrome in a brand new de Havilland DH.61 Giant Moth, named Apollo, on the inaugural Qantas service from Brisbane to Charleville. They were bearing just one passenger, 91-year-old Alexander Kennedy, who had been Qantas’s first passenger seven years before, and 1004 postal items, in its first link to the coast. On that first flight of the new service, the speed averaged 97 miles per hour, which was a 50 per cent increase on the speed registered on the inaugural Qantas flight in 1922.44 Still, of the many hold-the-phone things about this plane, the most blessed was that it was the first one in Australia to have, if you can believe it, an internal lavatory! No more would the company’s passengers after long flights be seen to frequently burst forth and sprint towards old tin sheds.45 Broadly, Qantas customers had gone from being fellow aviators, as they had been in the early years of operation, to being genuine passive passengers, who could begin to relax.