National Treasure

Held in the collection of the National Museum of Australia

THIS UNASSUMING SCRAP of wood has a storied past. It’s a propeller splinter from Southern Cross, the three-engined Fokker plane flown by pioneering aviator Sir Charles Kingsford Smith in 1928 on the first flight between the USA and Australia.

While crossing to New Zealand on a mail flight in 1935 to celebrate King George V’s Silver Jubilee, part of Southern Cross’s central engine broke and splintered the starboard propeller. Kingsford Smith was forced to turn back to Sydney, jettisoning cargo including 14 bags of precious mail.

But his navigator and co-pilot, Captain P. G.Taylor, realised the port engine was burning oil at an alarming rate, meaning it too would fail and the Southern Cross would ditch into the Tasman. He decided to top it up by siphoning oil from the useless starboard engine – but there was no way to do that other than repeatedly clamber out onto the wing struts, fighting the airstream, to transfer the oil with the only containers the embattled crew had – a thermos flask and a suitcase.

Taylor’s mid-air heroics earned him the Empire Gallantry Medal.

The propeller fragment was given to Victor Piper, aged 16, at the airport, and became part of the National Museum’s collection. In 2001 it flew even higher when Australian-born astronaut Andy Thomas took it into orbit on the space shuttle Discovery.