by Leigh Edmonds

Australia Takes Wing is the first of a three volume history of civil aviation in Australia in the Twentieth Century. It describes the period during which civil aviation became established in Australia from the beginning of human flight to the eve of World War II in 1939.

The book explores the issues that lay behind the creation of Australia’s civil aviation industry including Australia’s first airlines such as Qantas, Ansett and ANA, some of the early aviators such as Charles Kingsford Smith and Bert Hinkler and the beginnings of Australia’s civil aviation administration. To do this it focuses on such issues as the promotion, safety and organization of civil aviation in Australia and the relationship between civil aviation and other forms of transport. It argues that Australian civil aviation is significant in the history of aviation and technology because of Australia’s unique geography, political and social history. It is also significant in the history of Twentieth Century Australia because of the increasingly import role that civil aviation has played in the nation’s political, social and cultural life so that it impossible to imagine Australia at the end of the century without flight.

Chapters:

• Introduction – Not Another Book about Flying
• History makes Geography
• Lighter then the Air
• First to Fly
• Fascination with Flight
• False Start
• Government Policy
• Laying the Foundations
• Becoming Airminded
• The Crash
• The Cleaned Slate
• Competing Interests at Home
• Competing Interests Abroad
• Crisis in 1938
• Conclusion – War Comes

$22.00, includes 1 EPUB and 1 PDF.