As Bart Simpson would say, "I can't help but feel partly responsible for the thread drift".
Be that as it may the thread topic is important, so the floatplanes stuff should have been put under another thread like "Ripley's believe it or not", also worthy of importance if only for education.
May I suggest moderators, you move the drifted floatplanes stuff to a new truly "Australian" version of Ripley's to a thread called "Your'e fkucking joking" and leave Mr Phelans efforts to the serious debate it deserves.