A great moment in the pioneering days of flight

Day: 184 Stage three / total expedition days 575

Sunrise:
05:30

Sunset:
18:43

Total kilometers:
5771 km

Temperature - Day (maximum):
40° degrees, sun approx. 60°

Temperature - Night:
21° degrees

Latitude:
23°18'28.1"

Longitude:
144°22'24.5"

Bimbah Camp – 11/16/2002

Our hosts and we have been standing at a border fence at Longreach’s small airport for some time, waiting for the biggest gift the town has ever received. Exactly 82 years ago, two pilots founded the now world-famous airline Qantas here. They flew passengers and mail to remote settlements in a De Haviland 9C biplane. As flying was revolutionary and considered extremely dangerous at the time, the pair advertised their young company in Longreach’s daily newspaper. “Walking is the cheapest form of travel, but consider how long it takes! Time is money and therefore walking is not the cheapest, but the most expensive form of transportation today and a relic of the dark past.”

Another advertisement in the daily newspaper compared the time savings between an open biplane flight and the railroad. The article shows not only how remote the respective settlements were from the outside world, but also how adventurous and tedious it must have been to get from one place to another.

Longreach to Roma:
Flight 14.5 hours, costs 12 pounds.
Railroad 4 days, 16 hours, costs 10,- Pounds

Longreach to Toowoomba:
Flight 24 hours, costs 14 pounds.
Railroad 48 hours, costs 7,- Pounds.

Cloncurry to Charleville:
Flight 28.5 hours, costs 21 pounds.
Train 8 days, 16 hours, costs 16 pounds.

Longreach to Winton:
Flight 1.25 hrs.
Car 5 hrs.
Railroad under construction

Accidents that caused damage to the aircraft 6Accidents in which people were injured zero.

The success of modern aviation was already evident in the first year. In 1711 flight hours, 156 passengers and 82 parcels were transported to remote settlements.

Thousands of visitors are waiting with us at specially prepared parking lots in the surrounding fields not far from the short runway. The reason? The Qantas Aviation Museum at Longreach and the people of West Queensland will receive a full-size jumbo jet as a gift from Qantas, which will remain here forever after hopefully landing safely at the age of 23. Visitors to the Qantas Aviation Museum can then view the 747-200 inside and out and be transported back in time by the exciting and interesting history of the airline’s founding.

The talks, negotiations and logistical preparations have taken a year until the time has come and the largest passenger plane in aviation will land here in a few minutes. Around 360 747-200s are in service between international airports worldwide. Many of those present are surely wondering how such a large aircraft can safely touch down on such a short and narrow landing strip without overshooting and thundering into the adjacent scrubland?

“Here he comes! Here he comes!” some people next to us shout, pointing to the sky. We can actually make out the jumbo jet, which still looks small. The heads of the visitors gaze spellbound into the blue eternity. As if in slow motion, the 747 approaches and only slowly gets bigger and bigger. Then the pilot makes a few circles over the small town. “He’s probably looking at the runway again?” I hear a voice next to me. “Well, he’ll be shocked at how short she is,” says a man standing on the roof of his jeep and watching the giant bird through his video camera. “Well, I don’t mind at all if the jumbo jet races out over the runway and lands in our school building. We urgently need a new school kitchen,” shrieks a home economics teacher in a bright voice. “Come on, he’s not going to land in the direction of the city. That’s far too dangerous. I’m sure he’ll fly over the houses and land on the tarmac to the south,” her husband replies. “Fly over the houses? Never. If a big bird like that thunders so close over the roofs of Longreach, we’ll all need new windows,” replies a sports pilot.

But he is not right. The pilot of the aged 747 lets his giant bird tilt over the left wing, pulls a considerable loop and now hovers high above the roofs of the outback town. “Way too high! It flies far too high,” I hear the experts say. Now suddenly drastically losing altitude, the largest passenger plane of all time approaches the last rooftops. The four Rolls Roys engines can no longer be ignored. We watch spellbound as the 70.66-meter-long monster, with a dead weight of 169,960 kilograms, approaches the asphalt strip. A black, exploding cloud of smoke tells us that the wheels are absorbing the weight of the iron bird. The turbines screech, tearing up the air and drowning all other noises in ridicule. The 59.64-meter-long wings protrude far beyond the runway. An even louder roar of the engines announces the braking. Red earth is whirled into the air by the recoil of the drive motors. For a few moments, the giant is swallowed up. Just a wink later, the monster shoots out of the dust mist and I can hardly believe it when it has already slowed down to rolling speed. “The brakes are perfect,” comes from our neighbor’s radio loudspeaker. By chance, he has tuned in to the pilot’s frequency, which is why we are able to listen to the captain’s conversation. Loud applause sweeps across the tarmac. The spectators of this historic moment are thrilled by the performance of the pilot and all those involved in this undertaking.

A tractor unit specially delivered from Sydney pulls the retired air transporter to the halls. He will enjoy his retirement on a plateau built especially for him. His tiny little colleagues, who popularized flying here 83 years ago, will remind every visitor of the time of the pioneers, a time when it was normal to fly 20 hours in an open biplane over the untouched solitude …