38

HALLEY’s Comet has disappeared behind the sun. People await its reappearance. If Harry bothered to read anything in the newspapers other than his own notices or lurid accounts of ghastly accidents, he might know that Dr Maunder of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich has described it as, ‘The only periodic comet which is so brilliant as to arrest the attention of the whole world.’ Another astronomer assures concerned members of the public that they shall scarcely perceive the passage of the earth through the comet’s tail because its gases are spread over such a vast distance.

But when Harry lies awake it is not the comet that haunts him. He broods upon the sightless body in the river, now with rats for cold company in the morgue; his wife, who insisted on performing again and then walked away from the stage; the young swimmer who humiliated him at the City Baths; his flying machine that hasn’t flown. The Australian aviation record is within reach, an accomplishment different to anything he has achieved before, yet Harry remains hostage to factors he cannot control.

If he read newspapers he could also appreciate that this Australian record means little on the international stage. Even as Harry waits for everything to be in place, the aviator Henri Farman carries two passengers a distance of fourteen miles in sixteen and a half minutes over France in a flying machine of his own design. He also manages to stay aloft for sixty-two minutes. Both these feats represent world firsts, while Harry is yet to rise above Plumpton’s Paddock. But he still believes he has no serious rival in Australia. When the injured Ralph Banks tells him something he has heard about a Bleriot, its significance eludes him. Harry assumes that Banks is referring to Brassac’s former employer. Like the comet, the monoplane imported to Adelaide by F.H Jones stays out of his sight.

IT has left the Magic Cave.

Martin’s department store (‘Where Your Money Goes Farthest’) now advertises millinery rather than a flying machine. On Saturday 12 March, the day after Mrs Houdini’s final performance at Rickards’ Opera House, the Bleriot is dismantled, packed in a case, and carried to Bolivar, South Australia, on a trolley. The driver takes it slowly, worried that his horses could shy and dislodge their load if passed by a noisy motor car.

At Mr Winzor’s property, which is mostly flat, the Bleriot is put together by Carl Wittber and Fred Custance. They are aviation enthusiasts, working for nothing more than the chance to handle the monoplane owned by F.H Jones and have a crack at flying it themselves.

Wittber is an engineer, Custance a mechanic. In the triangular Bolivar field they toil in an improvised hangar, where they store tyres for the Bleriot’s undercarriage as well as petrol in four-gallon cans. Custance is only twenty years old: eleven years younger than Wittber. Harry knows nothing about him, although part of his perpetual unease can perhaps be attributed to an intimation of something happening far beyond his sight.

Another fit young man, indifferent to reputations, is out to beat him.

AVIATORS do not observe the Sabbath. On Sunday 13 March, Harry is back in Plumpton’s Paddock, where Brassac flushes out all fuel lines in the Voisin in another attempt to get the engine running smoothly.

In Melbourne, meanwhile, Horace Audran is relaxing with his jacket off in his own room, listening to the Boesendorfer play a new music-roll – a Beethoven piano sonata recently acquired from Allans music store in Elizabeth Street. The manager has allowed himself a few idle hours. It is warm, the music is soothing. He even allows his eyes to close, though he is unaware of this until he notices the absence of music. The Beethoven roll has stopped: all he can hear is the tell-tale hissing and clicking sound.

In Bolivar, Jones is keen for Wittber and Custance to begin proper testing of his flying machine. Early on Sunday morning, when Wittber and Custance complete the assembly of the Bleriot, conditions seem perfect. Not even a zephyr over the field. But by early afternoon the wind comes up. Fred Jones reminds his assistants that Europeans will not attempt flight if the wind is troublesome. The risks are too great, he says.

Custance is at the controls when the engine is tested. So great is the force of the propeller that Custance checks his eyebrows.

‘I thought they’d blown away,’ he jokes.

With the engine at half-speed, Wittber then takes the Bleriot for a test run, assessing its ability to handle the uneven ground.

It happens unexpectedly. A puff of wind under the wings. The machine rises a few feet and traverses a distance of two cricket pitches.

For a matter of seconds the Bleriot is airborne.

In the annals of Australian aviation history this becomes known as ‘Wittber’s hop’.