Tuesday, July 19, 2011

 

A Historic Beach

The long beach in the top photo is called 7-mile beach, and back in 1933 it was the site of a very historic event. On Jan 11, my hero Charles Kingsford-Smith and his crew took off from here on the first commercial flight across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand. The beach was used because Smithy's aircraft, the Fokker F.VII/3m "Southern Cross" was heavily overloaded with fuel and mail and needed a very long take-off run. The beach has miles of hard sand at low tide, so it was perfect. Because the flight started at 2.30 am, flares were lit to show Smithy the best runway, and hundreds of cars whose drivers came to see the take-off turned their headlights on to help. The town where we took the pictures is Gerroa. It is built mostly on a hill overlooking the beach. Just off the highway at the top of the hill is a memorial celebrating the event. It has a 3/4 size concrete plan of the "Southern Cross", with a concrete pillar and brass plaque with information on it. Scruffy and I know a lot about Smithy and the "Southern Cross". In fact, we have seen the aircraft in its special hangar near Brisbane airport (you can see the photos if you use the search box; search Southern Cross). Milkshake and Blu are still learning things, so we got Dad to lift us up onto the pillar where we could see the beach and the read the plaque, and Scruff and I told them all about the most famous aviator and aircraft in the world.

Labels: , , ,


Comments: Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?