Thesky’sthelimit
Aprecis: it’s 1927; a Melburnian housewife, whose ambitions stray beyond the kitchen sink, boards a liner and sails to London for a six- month break from her boring marriage. She is known — unsuitably it seems — as “Chubbie”. At an artist’s party Chubbie meets Bill, a decorated Great War veteran flyer. Bill is preparing to make the first open cockpit bi- plane flight from England to Australia, but is short of funds. Though not having been in a plane of any sort, Chubbie determines she wants to fly with him in his frail wood, linen and glue matchstick of the sky.
With her offer of a chunk of funding, she persuades the pilot to take her as a cockpit assistant.
The flight is besieged by difficulties. Undaunted, the pair fall in love in the Middle Eastern deserts but their adulterous relationship must remain their secret. Some 158 days after leaving London, they arrive in Darwin, an achievement which propels general helper and nowproven strategist Chubbie to an object of adulation among the Australian people. No going back to the kitchen sink now, girl.
Thus, she learns to fly and heads to America where she joins a select group of competitive female pilots vying for honours ( and a prize purse) in outrageous challenges. Chubbie is good, but not good enough to regularly claim the winnings. Captain Bill is short of flying contracts. They are poor as church mice.
The best hope is for Chubbie to write her autobiography — it’s a life worth telling already — so they rent a place in Miami and are soon joined in the domestic arrangement by a young, handsome journalist who agrees to ghost write the book. They all get on famously and “living together” as friends and lovers poses no apparent problems. Until one night, the journalist is shot in the head.
There is a comprehensive court case but no conclusion so the main suspect, Captain Bill, goes free. Before long he crosses to the dark side and contracts to fly contraband for some crooks. In 1933, he crashes in the desert and his remains are not discovered until 1962.
In her author’s notes, Sydneysider Carol Baxter quotes Mark Twain speaking of his own book of adventures in Australia ... “It is full of surprises, and adventures, and incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities but they are all true, they all happened . . . ”
Likewise, here. The story of Jessie Keith- Miller ( Chubbie) and British Captain William Newton Lancaster is told in scrupulous detail from a straining array of archival material which the author combed over many months. Baxter has here produced reportage at its best. In her author’s note she makes much of the fact that this is “non- fiction narrative” and as such, she restricts herself to proven material. It’s not a genre that allows character development, but in this case, it doesn’t matter. Despite its predictable pace — you can almost feel her foot on the brake — this is an admirable piece of work.