Born on this day
Tuesday, November 16, 1920. : Colin Thiele, Australian writer and author of ‘Storm Boy’, is born.
Colin Thiele was born on 16 November 1920, in Eudunda, a small town north of the Barossa Valley in South Australia. After graduating from the University of Adelaide, he served in the Royal Australian Air Force during World War II. He then became a high school teacher, college lecturer, and principal. Thiele’s novels for both children and adults were heavily influenced by his own German-Australian upbringing. A number of his stories won literary awards, and several were made into films or TV series. Among his better-known children’s works are “Storm Boy”, “Blue Fin”, “Sun on the Stubble” and “Magpie Island”. In 1977 Thiele was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, the highest level of the award, for his services to literature and education.
After retiring from teaching and writing, Colin Thiele lived in Dayboro, Queensland, until his death on 4 September 2006. The Thiele Library at the Magill campus of the University of South Australia is named after him, an honour which predated his death by many years. A life-size detailed statue of Colin Thiele and Mr Percival, the pelican from “Storm Boy”, was constructed by sculptor Chris Radford and located in the Eudunda Centennial Gardens. Due to deterioration, the statue required repair, so the decision was made to have it recast in bronze, a process completed the year before Thiele died.
Australian Explorers
Tuesday, November 16, 1824. : Hume and Hovell become the first white men to sight the Murray River.
Hamilton Hume was an Australian-born settler with excellent bush skills. He was interested in exploring south of the known Sydney area in order to open up new areas of land, but could not gain Government support for his proposed venture. William Hovell was an English immigrant with little bush experience, a former ship’s captain who was keen to assist Hume’s expedition financially and accompany him. The expedition was set up, and Hume and Hovell departed Hume’s father’s farm at Appin, southwest of Sydney, on 3 October 1824.
Although the two men argued for most of their journey, and even for many years after their return, the expedition was successful in many ways. On 16 November 1824, Hume and Hovell became the first white men to sight and name the “Hume River”, though it was later renamed by Sturt as the Murray River. Hovell recorded in his journal that they arrived suddenly “at a very fine river -at least 200 feet wide, apparently deep… on both sides the land is low and level of a fine alluvial soil, with grass up to our middle. This I named Humes River, he being the first that saw it. In the solid wood of a healthy tree, I carved my name.” That river redgum still stands on the banks of the mighty Murray, at Albury in New South Wales.
Australian History
Sunday, November 16, 1919. : The first south to north transcontinental flight across Australia occurs.
The first Australian to demonstrate that man could fly was Lawrence Hargrave, who was born in England in 1850, but emigrated to Australia in 1865. Hargrave invented the box kite in 1893, and used it to further his aerodynamic studies. In November 1894, Hargrave linked four of his kites together, added a sling seat, and flew about five metres in the air on a beach near Wollongong, New South Wales. In doing so, he demonstrated that it was possible for man to build, and be transported in, a safe and stable flying machine. His radical design for a wing that could support far more than its own weight opened up opportunities for other inventors to develop the design for commercial purposes.
The first domestic airmail service in Australia commenced in Melbourne in July 1914. Five years later, technology had developed to the point where the first south to north transcontinental flight was made possible. The flight was undertaken by Captain Henry N Wrigley and Sergeant Arthur William Murphy, flying a B.E.2E aircraft. The purpose of the flight was to survey the route for competitors in the first England to Australia air race. Wrigley and Murphy departed Point Cook, Victoria on 16 November 1919 and reached Darwin, Northern Territory on 12 December. It took the pair 46 flying hours to cover the 2500 mile journey (4023 km).
Australian History
Tuesday, November 16, 1920. : Australian airline Qantas is founded.
In 1919, Australia’s Federal Government offered a £10,000 prize for the first Australians to fly from England to Australia within 30 days. Two men who sought to take up the challenge were W Hudson Fysh and Paul McGinness, former Australian Flying Corps officers who had served together at Gallipoli. The venture required substantial funding, and the men’s plans were thwarted when a wealthy would-be sponsor died and the money was not released from his estate. However, the setback directed Fysh and McGinness toward another undertaking – that of a regular air service to remote settlements in the outback.
Fysh and McGinness were contracted by the Federal Defence Department to survey part of the original race route by motor car. The arduous journey of almost 2200km from Longreach in northwest Queensland to Katherine in the Northern Territory in a Model T Ford highlighted the need for transport services for remote communities. After securing financing from another wealthy grazier, Fergus McMaster, the ‘Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services’, or Qantas, was born. McMaster stated that Qantas was founded in Winton, western Queensland, as that was the location of the only meeting the directors – McMasters, Fysh, McGinness and mechanic, former flight sergeant Arthur Baird – ever had. Papers formally establishing the service were signed in the Gresham Hotel in Brisbane on 16 November 1920. The company, which soon moved its operations to the more central town of Longreach, operated air mail services subsidised by the Australian government from 1922, linking railheads in western Queensland. In 1934, QANTAS Limited and Britain’s Imperial Airways, forerunner of British Airways, formed a new company, Qantas Empire Airways Limited. QEA commenced services between Brisbane and Singapore using deHavilland DH-86 Commonwealth Airliners. In 1935 the first overseas passenger flight from Brisbane to Singapore was operated in a journey which took four days.
Most of the QEA fleet was taken over by the Australian government for war service between 1939 and 1945, and many of these aircraft were lost in action. After the war, QEA experienced severe financial losses, and the airline was taken over by the government under Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley. In 1967, the name was changed to Qantas Airways Limited.
Australian History
Wednesday, November 16, 1938. : The Waterside Workers’ Strike, which earns Robert Menzies the nickname of ‘Pig-Iron Bob’, begins.
Robert Gordon Menzies entered politics in 1928 after being elected to Victoria’s Legislative Council for East Yarra. After six years in Victorian state politics as Attorney-General and Minister for Railways (1928–34), he was elected to federal parliament as Member for Kooyong. From 1935, Menzies was Deputy leader of the United Australia Party under Joseph Lyons, as well as Attorney-General and Minister for Industry.
On 16 November 1938, members of the Waterside Workers’ Union at Port Kembla in New South Wales refused to load cargo of pig-iron onto the steamer Delfram. Around 400 tons of pig-iron had already been loaded when the men held a stop-work meeting at 1pm, based on their belief that the pig-iron was not intended for Singapore, as they had been told, but bound for Japan. Japan was already seen as a major threat in the Pacific.
In his position as Attorney-General, Menzies was forced to intervene. Reminding the unions that the League of Nations had not imposed trade sanctions against Japan, he threatened to invoke the Transport Workers Act against the unions if they did not load the pig-iron. Due to the ongoing strike action, the steelworks were closed, forcing many workers into unemployment. After a dispute lasting nine weeks and resulting in an estimated cost of £100,000 in lost wages and £3000 for the owners of the Delfram which lay idle at Port Kembla throughout that time, the workers agreed to load the remaining pig-iron. Union leaders met with the Prime Minister and Robert Menzies to settle the terms later that week. The entire incident earned Robert Menzies the nickname of “Pig-Iron Bob”, which remained with him throughout his political career, and followed him into the history books.
World History
Friday, November 16, 1855. : Missionary and explorer David Livingstone becomes the first non-African to sight Victoria Falls in Africa.
David Livingstone was born on 19 March 1813, in Blantyre, Scotland. Initially he studied medicine and theology at the University of Glasgow, but when he was 27 years old, he sailed from Scotland to South Africa as a Christian missionary. Whilst there he spent some time exploring the African interior, becoming one of the first Westerners to make a transcontinental journey across Africa. Livingstone was popular among native tribes in Africa because he quickly learned African languages and had a keen understanding and sympathy for native people and their cultures.
On 16 November 1855, Livingstone first sighted the spectacular Victoria Falls. Upon reaching them, he named them after the reigning monarch, Queen Victoria. Known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya, the “smoke that thunders”, the falls are situated on the Zambezi River, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, and are approximately 1.6 kilometres wide and 128 metres high.
Livingstone’s lack of contact with the outside world over several years raised concerns for his welfare and prompted the New York Herald to send journalist Henry Morton Stanley to track down the explorer in Africa. On 10 November 1871, Stanley met up with Livingstone, greeting him with the famous words “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” The two men explored together briefly but Livingston, weakened from dysentery, died less than two years later, on 30 April 1873.
World History
Monday, November 16, 1959. : The original Broadway production of The Sound of Music opens.
The Sound of Music is a musical with music composed by Richard Rodgers and lyrics written by Oscar Hammerstein II. It is based on the book The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, a memoir written by Maria Augusta von Trapp, published in 1949. Details were changed for the stage Musical: the real Maria von Trapp married Georg von Trapp in 1927 and the family departed Austria by train to Italy before continuing on to London and the US. However, the fictionalised account of the von Trapps’ marriage amid the Anschluss – the annexing of Austria into Nazi Germany in March 1938 – and their escape on foot over the mountains to Switzerland proved popular in the Musical version.
The Sound of Music was the last musical ever written by Rodgers and Hammerstein as Oscar Hammerstein died of cancer less than a year after the Broadway premiere on 16 November 1959. The original production starred Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel. The London production opened at the Palace Theatre on 18 May 1961. The film version, which popularised songs such as ‘Edelweiss’, ‘Do-Re-Mi’ and ‘My Favorite Things’, was produced in 1965 and starred Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.
Both the stage Musical and the film were award-winning. The Broadway production received nine nominations and won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, whilst the film version won five Academy Awards. Since then, the stage production has been revived and adapted in various forms, performed in dozens of countries.
New Zealand History
Monday, November 16, 1840. : New Zealand becomes a separate colony, no longer administered by New South Wales.
The first known European to sight the islands of New Zealand was Dutch trader and explorer Abel Tasman, who did so in 1642. The next explorer to venture through New Zealand waters was James Cook, who claimed New Zealand for Great Britain. This signalled the start of British occupation of the islands previously occupied only by the Maori.
In June 1839, letters patent were issued in London extending the boundaries of New South Wales to include “any territory which is or may be acquired in sovereignty by Her Majesty … within that group of Islands in the Pacific Ocean, commonly called New Zealand”. In 1839, the British government appointed William Hobson as consul to New Zealand and, prior to Hobson leaving Sydney for New Zealand, the Governor of New South Wales issued a proclamation declaring that the boundaries of New South Wales were extended to include “such territory in New Zealand as might be acquired in sovereignty”. New Zealand officially became a dependency of New South Wales when the Legislative Council passed an Act extending to New Zealand the laws of New South Wales, on 16 June 1840. The purpose of this was to ensure New Zealand was administered by the British while the issue of sovereignty over the islands was being asserted.
Five months later, on 16 November 1940, New Zealand officially became a separate colony of the United Kingdom, severing its link to New South Wales, with the ‘Charter for erecting the Colony of New Zealand’.