qantas

Hythe Flying Boat - Sydney to London. With accommodation for 22 passengers, the flying boat has four Bristol Pegasus engines and has an average speed of 165 miles per hour. The flying boat service between England and Australia began in 1938 when large luxury flying boats began to operate a thrice-weekly service between Rose Bay, Sydney, and Southampton, England. The trip took 10 days, instead of 40 days by the sea, and involved nine overnight stops in luxury hotels or specially built accommodation. In addition, there were 20 stops for refueling. Most stops were coastal stopovers near cities and towns such as Singapore, Rangoon, and Athens. Travel on these Empire Flying Boats was the height of luxury and the cost of a one-way ticket was £200, which was an average year's wage at the time. These were the first planes to offer reclining seats and to include an in-flight service of food and drinks. The service was interrupted by World War II when more than half the Qantas fleet was commissioned for war service by the Australian Government. In May 1946 the United Kingdom/Australia route was re-established and consolidated the position of the "Kangaroo" service as a world trunk air route. In 1949 the flying boat service ceased operation when the route was taken over by the speedier Lockheed Constellations. These modern airliners could fly from Sydney, via Singapore, to London in just four days. The Birbeck family from Burnley in Lancashire, England, emigrated to Australia for the climate and the chance of a better quality of life. The route, as outlined by Dilys Birbeck in her hand-written itinerary, started at Southhampton and then proceeded to Port Augusta in Sicily, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, Burma, Singapore, Sourabaya in Indonesia, Darwin, Bowen in Queensland, and then on to the final destination of Sydney. The collection includes maps of the route. Joyce Birbeck, who was six at the time, remembers that the passengers consisted of "our family, including nine-month-old baby Susan, and seventeen businessmen. We were joined by four Greek women who had all their possessions tied in a red scarf bundle and an Italian girl of nineteen. She was going to Western Australia as a 'proxy' bride and had yet to meet her husband-to-be. My father calmed her when she was nervous as he had learned to speak Italian in his war service years". The seaplane eventually reached Australia and landed in Bowen, Queensland, at midnight to refuel. Joy writes in her reminiscences, which are included in the collection, that "At this point, my mother broke down in tears, she cried and cried. Coming from England with little towns and villages scattered about, the flight across hundreds of miles with no human habitation, just miles of bushland, was quite overwhelming". After arriving in Sydney the family was photographed by the local press and five days later took a train to Brisbane. Within four weeks they had purchased a small run-down poultry farm at Deagon on the northern outskirts of the town. The children attended Sandgate State School and the family thrived. In 1952, after the birth of their son John, they moved to a 4-acre farm on the edge of Zillmere and built up the land as poultry and small crops farm. Source: www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/new-accession-dilys-mary-birbeck-...

OK So VH-ABB "Coolangatta" was a Short type 23 Empire flying boat, and it arrived in Sydney for the first time on its delivery flight April 2 1938. So the 1936 date attributed to this photo would appear to be wrong. www.aussieairliners.org/shortfb/vh-abb/vhabb.html

In 1954, the royals visited 57 towns and cities during the 58 days they spent in Australia. They traversed the country by plane, train, ship, and car from Cairns in the north, Broken Hill in the west to Hobart in the south. Their children, Prince Charles (aged five years) and Princess Anne (aged three years) did not accompany them on the exhausting trip. Source: www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/1954-royal-tour-queen-elizabeth-ii