Stamps

	The American pilot, Wizard Stone, who had been a pioneer aviator in Australia since 1912 and who had taken part in a famous air race with Australian William Hart in Sydney, arranged in 1914 with the Postmaster General to fly the first inter-capital air mail between Melbourne and Sydney. Unfortunately for Stone, the date set was 6th of June and he crashed his aircraft on 1st of June suffering severe damage to his body. A Frenchman Maurice Guillaux who was in Australia on a commercial vist representing Caudron offered to take Stone's place. Guillaux set out on the 16th of July from Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, loaded with 1785 letter-cards, some Liptons Tea and some Lemon Squash. Guillaux survived the weather and mechanical difficulties and landed at Moore Park in Sydney on the 18th of July. His flight time was 9 hours and 33 minutes spread over 3 days.
	A Eulogy in "The Age" included the following on Wrigley's flight from Melbourne to Darwin. "Air Vice-Marshal Wrigley became a household name in 1919 when he completed the first Melbourne to Darwin flight in a biplane. Then a Flying Corps Captain, he and his co-pilot, Sergeant Arthur Murphy, hacked down a line of 20 metre high trees on a makeshift airfield to make it possible to take off from Katherine in the Northern Territory. But two false starts and countless delays through engine failure cost him the honour of being the first man to land at Darwin. That accolade went to Ross Smith, who landed 24 hours earlier. His inaugral flight helped establish a mapped course for English and Australian pilots. " and "A postal stamp of Air Vice-Marshal Wrigley was issued in 1969 to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of his epic flight. The five cent stamps are now treasured by Stamp Collectors and are valued around $14 each."
	Harry Hawker was one of the worlds pioneering aviators. In 1913 he set an endureance record of 8 hours and 20 minutes, set a new height record of 11,700 feet and then later an air speed record of 92 miles per hour. Hawker also supposedly solved the problem of the spin. Until 1914 a spin was terminal, a pilot generally surviving on luck, Hawker surmised that the counter-intuitive action of pushing the stick forward would solve the problem. He was correct. Hawker was chief test pilot and designer for Sopwith, one of the leading aircraft manufacturers of the day. In 1919 Hawker with McKenzie Grieve attempted to cross the Atlantic in a flight to win a 10,000 pound prize offered by the "Daily Mail". Their engine failed and they crashed into the water, luckily being rescued later. Both were assumed lost and Banjo Paterson wrote a poem in Eulogy for Hawker. After WWI, Sopwith went out of business and Hawker started the H.G. Hawker Engineering which would later produce military designs such as the Hawker Fury, Hawker Hurricane and in more modern times the Hawker-Siddely Harrier. Harry Hawker died in 1921 in an air accident.
	In 1919, Hudson Fysh and Paul MicGinness had been given the task of surveying the northern component of the route for the 1919 England to Australia Air Race. After surveying the route, they welcomed the arriving Vickers Vimy fof their old Squadron mate, Ross Smith. It was from this episode that Fysh and McGinness decided the only reliable means of communication and transportation in the outback would be by air.
	Charles Kingsford Smith was a native of Brisbane and in WWI signed up with the Royal Flying Corps. After the war Smith embarked upon a career as a record breaking aviator. In 1927, Smith in company with Charles Ulm purchased a Fokker Tri-motor to attempt a trans-pacific flight. They named the Fokker the "Southern Cross". On May 31st, 1928, Smith flew from California to Brisbane in eight days. The "Southern Cross" also set records crossing Australia non-stop, doing a trans-Tasman flight to New Zealand, a round the world trip and an East-West crossing of the Pacific. Kingsford Smith was lost in 1935 while on a non-stop flight from India to Singapore in the "Lady Southern Cross". The only part of the wreckage that was found was the starboard undercarriage which washed ashore. Many areas are named in honour of Kingsford Smith including the main airport in Sydney, at Mascot.
	Bert Hinkler was a antive of Bundaberg in Queensland. Hinkler previous to WWI worked for Sopwith and then joined the Royal Flying Corps eventually serving as a Sopwith Camel pilot in the Italian Theatre. Post WWI he joined A.V & Roe as Chief Test Pilot, which was to set him off on the exploits which were to make him a well known aviation figure. Hinkler featured in many well known flights, his most famous flight being the solo England to Australia flight in the Avro Avian in 1928. Hinkler was lost over the Appenines where his wrecked aircraft was found in 1933 while attempting another England to Australia flight. Depicted on the stamp is the Avro Avian G-EBOV which is currently on display in the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, Australia.
	The CAC Wackett trainer was CAC's first inhouse design in the 1930's and was designed by ex 1 and 3 Sqn AFC member, Sir Lawrence Wackett. The aircraft was intended to be an intermediate trainer between the Tiger Moth and the CAC Wirraway. Wackett had proved himself a capable and innovative engineer throughout WWI, creating an interupter gear for the Bristol Scout in the Palestinian theatre in 1916, an overhead mount for a Lewis gun on the BE12a and later a contraption to allow the air-dropping of ammunition to forward troops. This latter invention was used successfully by both the AFC and RFC at the Battle of Hamel in Europe during 1918.
	50 Years of QANTAS. In November 1919, two ex-AFC members, Hudson Fysh and Paul McGinness registered a company known by the name Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited with it's headquarters in Winton, Queensland. Fysh and McGinness had the idea after watching the Smith brothers land their Vickers Vimy in Darwin while winning the England to Australia air race. Fysh's and McGinness's small outback services have grown into the huge commercial airline today, QANTAS. The airline QANTAS is not only well known for it's aircraft with the red tails and white kangaroo's but also for being the only airline with an exemplary safety record, celebrated recently in the Hollywood film, "Rainman".