ugly
20th Oct 2003, 20:50
http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1274&storyid=363234
SOME long-forgotten treasures belonging to legendary Australian aviator Sir Charles Kingsford Smith have turned up in the United States during a house move.
His son, also named Charles, was in Brisbane today from his US base to donate the memorabilia to a Queensland Museum collection honouring his father.
Among the items donated today were a birth certificate that showed "Smithy" was born in the Brisbane suburb of Hamilton on February 9, 1897, along with his certificate of marriage to Mary Powell, a cigarette case, some World War I medals and an envelope Smithy carried on one of his trips that was postmarked at every stop he made.
Mr Kingsford-Smith (the family adopted the hyphenated name later) said he had come across the items while moving home in the United States.
"It was a shame to leave these things in storage in a box or two at our place so I thought they really ought to join the other things here," he said.
Mr Kingsford-Smith was one month short of his third birthday when his father disappeared off Burma in 1935 while trying to break the England to Australia flying record.
He said although he was scared at the time he now treasured the memory of going flying with his father.
"I never knew my father, I remember two or three very vague childish kind of things, I remember being taken up in his airplane," Mr Kingsford-Smith said.
"I'm not sure whether it was the Southern Cross or not, but I remember I sat between dad and another man.
"I remember seeing the propellor spinning around in front of me and I was crying.
"They were both trying to comfort me and my mother who was not far away was also trying to calm me down."
He said he planned to see for the first time in 25 years Smithy's famous Fokker trimotor, the Southern Cross, in which he made the first aerial crossing of the Pacific in 1928.
The plane is now preserved in a special building at Brisbane airport.
"One of my main thoughts on seeing it will be how on earth could a machine like this, an early primitive airplane, ever go across that vast ocean," Mr Kingsford-Smith said.
SOME long-forgotten treasures belonging to legendary Australian aviator Sir Charles Kingsford Smith have turned up in the United States during a house move.
His son, also named Charles, was in Brisbane today from his US base to donate the memorabilia to a Queensland Museum collection honouring his father.
Among the items donated today were a birth certificate that showed "Smithy" was born in the Brisbane suburb of Hamilton on February 9, 1897, along with his certificate of marriage to Mary Powell, a cigarette case, some World War I medals and an envelope Smithy carried on one of his trips that was postmarked at every stop he made.
Mr Kingsford-Smith (the family adopted the hyphenated name later) said he had come across the items while moving home in the United States.
"It was a shame to leave these things in storage in a box or two at our place so I thought they really ought to join the other things here," he said.
Mr Kingsford-Smith was one month short of his third birthday when his father disappeared off Burma in 1935 while trying to break the England to Australia flying record.
He said although he was scared at the time he now treasured the memory of going flying with his father.
"I never knew my father, I remember two or three very vague childish kind of things, I remember being taken up in his airplane," Mr Kingsford-Smith said.
"I'm not sure whether it was the Southern Cross or not, but I remember I sat between dad and another man.
"I remember seeing the propellor spinning around in front of me and I was crying.
"They were both trying to comfort me and my mother who was not far away was also trying to calm me down."
He said he planned to see for the first time in 25 years Smithy's famous Fokker trimotor, the Southern Cross, in which he made the first aerial crossing of the Pacific in 1928.
The plane is now preserved in a special building at Brisbane airport.
"One of my main thoughts on seeing it will be how on earth could a machine like this, an early primitive airplane, ever go across that vast ocean," Mr Kingsford-Smith said.