Snapshot: Qantas turns 100
From a runway in outback Queensland, our national carrier first took to the skies a century ago and has been helping overcome Australia’s tyranny of distance ever since.
WITH ITS WINGS severely clipped by the current pandemic, the aviation industry is enduring a turbulent time, making 16 November 2020 particularly poignant. It’s the 100th anniversary of Qantas, which, as one of the most iconic Australian businesses, has helped define our domestic and international identity.
Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd (QANTAS at first, then later rebranded as Qantas) was registered on 16 November 1920 in Winton, central western Queensland, by two Gallipoli veterans – Paul McGinness and Hudson Fysh. With financial backing from grazier Fergus McMaster and with engineer Arthur Baird on board, the company took off. Air travel appealed to the Australian imagination, and, being a pragmatic response to the country’s vast landscape, it was adopted enthusiastically. The company began operations in 1921 with two open-cabin biplanes flying mail and, from 1922, passengers between small outback towns. By 1930 Qantas had 11 planes, six of which were made locally in their own workshops, and had flown more than 10,400 passengers around the country. By 1950 one in six Aussies were already taking at least one flight a year, making us among the planet’s most air-travelling peoples.
Overseas passenger flights began in 1935, with a DH-86 Brisbane–Singapore service that took three and a half days. The first Australia to Great Britain service began in 1938. Flying boats flew from Sydney’s Rose Bay, via Brisbane, to Singapore, where Imperial Airways would take over for the rest of the flight. In the same year, Qantas began using flight crew who were all male. Women would not start welcoming passengers on board Qantas planes as ‘air hostesses’ until 1947.
By 1943 Catalina flying boats were travelling non-stop from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to Perth, on the only regular air service across the Indian Ocean. Passengers on this route were in the air non-stop for more than 24 hours, recognised by a membership certificate to the Rare and Secret Order of the Double Sunrise. The 1944 introduction of Liberator aircraft brought the travel time down to 17 hours on what was branded the Kangaroo Service and passengers were inducted to the Elevated Order of the Longest Hop.
These Liberators were the first aircraft to carry a Qantas emblem depicting a kangaroo, a circular design based on the reverse-side image of the Australian penny coin. This was revamped by influential designer and artist Gert Sellheim to promote the airline’s new Kangaroo Service to London, and appeared on the airline’s new Lockheed Constellations in January 1947. The elegant flying kangaroo he designed has been reinterpreted over the years but remains the basis of the company’s distinctive insignia today.