For a brief moment 80 years ago, the southern NSW town of Albury was the centre of the world’s attention. Martin Buzacott tells the story of how in the dying stages of the marathon London-Melbourne Air Race, the people of the Albury and the local ABC radio manager combined to save one plane from disaster.

October 2014 marked the 80th anniversary of the London-Melbourne Air Race, an event that was to have a major impact on the future of aviation.

Sponsored by the chocolate manufacturer Sir MacPherson Robertson, the creator of the Freddo Frog and Cherry Ripe, it was the biggest news in the world at the time, with double-page daily spreads in broadsheet newspapers and live coverage on radio.

The mayor of Albury was invited to come to Holland and he spent 17 days touring the then-11 provinces of Holland, where he was treated like royalty. Noel Jackling, local historian

Initially there were 64 entrants, including big names like Amy Johnson and Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, but in the lead-up to the event the logistical challenges of flying halfway around the world proved onerous, and by race day most had dropped out, including ‘Smithy’ himself. There were just 20 competitors at the starting line in Mildenhall, England on 20 October 1934.

The race made heroes of the eventual winners, CWA Scott and Tom Black, and brought emerging aircraft manufacturers like Boeing, Douglas and de Havilland to public attention, but these days it’s best-remembered for the emergency that occurred close to the finish line.

The race’s second place-getter, a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines DC2 known as the Uiver—‘Stork’ in Dutch—was forced to make an emergency landing in Albury after losing communication during a severe electrical storm. That in itself wasn’t remarkable; long-distance flying at the time was hazardous and more than half the race field was forced to put down unexpectedly at least once during the race.

The circumstances in which the landing occurred were extraordinary, though. The plane, flying blind, just managed to avoid the Australian Alps and find safety on the ground in a town that had no airstrip.

Also remarkable were the ingenuity and community spirit the people of Albury brought to bear in the middle of that stormy night.

‘What the race did was to put Albury on the international map,’ says local historian Noel Jackling.

‘The mayor of Albury was invited to come to Holland and he spent 17 days touring the then-11 provinces of Holland, where he was treated like royalty.’

Why such international adulation for a small-town Australian mayor?

Using the city’s lighting grid as Morse Code and with car headlights lined up to form a makeshift landing strip at the local racecourse, Albury residents ensured that the state-of-the-art aircraft made a safe landing on an open space that even in dry conditions should have been way too short.

Years later, the plane’s co-pilot Jan Johannes Moll revisited Albury. ‘I just had a good look this morning at the racecourse and I still don’t know how we ever put a plane down there,’ he told ABC local radio. ‘I don’t think it would happen a second time.’

In fact, Moll and the Uiver’s pilot, Dirk Parmentier, both wrote detailed accounts of events that occurred that night, which have been translated into English for the first time by Robert Bom and Noel Jackling and adapted for radio by myself.

The race was as much a turning point for broadcasting as it was for aviation. In Europe, America, and countries all along the race route, people heard about the safe landing in Albury before the Uiver’s propellers had stopped turning.

For many people, the hero of the night was the ABC’s Riverina manager, Arthur Newnham, who broke into the ABC’s national broadcast out of Melbourne in order to tell Albury residents to go to the racecourse with their cars.

‘He started getting mail from people,’ recalls his son Arthur Newnham Jr, who was there that night. ‘A crate of tea turned up for Dad from Java and there were several proposals of marriage.’

After arriving in Melbourne the next day and securing second place in line honours and victory in the handicap section of the place, Captain Parmentier took to the airwaves himself.

‘The first thing that I want to tell you is that I am very grateful for all the things that the National Broadcasting Commission has done to make our landing last night possible at the racecourse at Albury,’ he said.

‘I also must express my thanks for the help I had from the Mayor of Albury and the population who were very helpful this morning to get our plane out of the mud and to make it possible for us to takeoff.’

That takeoff was as risky as the landing: all passengers and luggage were offloaded and the townspeople hauled the plane out of the mud at the end of long ropes while the engines roared.

The plane barely cleared the fences at the end of the improvised runway, but once safely on its way, Albury and the Uiver’s respective places in the aviation history books were assured.

Hindsight presents history in a new light, offering insights and perspectives on the past through stories, some well known and some, till now, unheard.



