Hustling Hinkler
On February 7, 1928, Australian Bert Hinkler took off from London in a two-seat Avro 581E Avian biplane on the first leg of his solo flight from England to Australia. The unassuming Hinkler’s grueling flight was little noted by the press until he reached India, then the world press got caught up in the drama of another ‘Lone Eagle’ performance so soon after Charles A. Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight. As he plotted a course across Asia and the Timor Sea using a London Times atlas as his navigational chart, a newspaper editor dubbed him ‘Hustling Hinkler,’ a nickname later immortalized by the American Tin Pan Alley hit song, ‘Hustling Hinkler Up in the Sky.’ On February 22, after flying 128 hours in less than 16 days, Hinkler’s 11,250-mile adventure ended in Darwin, Australia.
Image courtesy of Terry Treadwell
