Here’s the situation, the Queen’s coming in the Britannia. It’s coming around the Eastern Coast and it’s due in Melbourne tomorrow.

The Sun wants to get a photo of them coming into Australian waters. So they come to me and say, we want to see in the Royal Yacht so I pursue the appropriate channels with London, and they say, quite predictably mind you, ‘No way, no aeroplanes near the boat’. They didn’t want to give us clearance under any circumstances, so I asked, “What’s the problem?” They said, ‘Well, the Navy is in control, they’re the ones escorting the Queen.’ It was the Anzac escorting, one of our Aussi warships. They said, ‘The Navy is in control and they’re the ones that have insisted, no aeroplanes.’

So I told them thank you very much to them and then got onto the Navy. I eventually manage to get onto the Chief of the Navy and he said, ‘No, no way, the civil aviation people should have told you that already. I said, ‘Yeah did, but I just wanted to verify that there is absolutely no way around it at all.’ ‘Well there isn’t,” he said. ‘We’re responsible for safety, and the answer is no way.’ I said then, ‘Who can give me permission.’ He said, ‘Well there’s only one person who can do that, and that’s the Captain of the Britannia.’ See how a bit of persistence opens up new doors. So then I found out, by rather devious means, the Captain’s phone number from the Adelaide Wharf.

He was a nice guy, he said to me, ‘The Navy looks after us, we don’t get involved in these things, and they decide our security.’ I said to him, ‘Look we have a state of the art aeroplane, I’m a returned serviceman battling to make a few dollars, and I’ve got an opportunity of doing this story for a local newspaper we will respect any regulations if we can just have permission to go out there and take a photo for the paper.’ And he said, ‘Well, I can’t see why not’ I said, ‘Sir, could you pass that on to the Navy?’ He said, ‘Well you sound sensible enough.’

Alan’s plane hovering what was later considered to be a bit too close to The Brittania

Alan really did have to slice through the bureaucracy to get the job done one this occasion.

Later we talked to another guy from The Age and he said he’d asked the Navy and they’d said no, and he’d more or less folded like a pack of cards. And what a shock he got when I told him we’d pulled it off. We went out there when the day came, with the boys from The Sun and they got a great story, exclusive photos – it was a huge success.[1]

We got to a stage where the crayfish were dying down. Like everything, you fish it out. Fisherman while they can make money will go hard, but in the end it gets fished out. Crayfish went up to an enormous price. Right now it’s the cheapest it’s been for thirty years.[1] Everybody who loved crayfish had a ton to eat of it at Easter if they wanted it.

The early years were certainly a scramble, Moorabbin was a colourful array of characters, one in particular was Dave Burke. He was only with FIA for a short time, but was hard for many, like Bruce, to forget:

We had one pilot, Ted Marshall, I was the co-pilot, Alan was the boss, Ted Allen was the ground Engineer who looked after maintenance and FIA owned engines, he had an apprentice, David Squirrell. Ted Marshall got very sick and couldn’t fly any more so we got a guy called Dave Burke and when he came to us he was all of 55 or 60, so I was 18 and he was already a very old man!

Dave was deaf had a hearing aid, in those days hearing aids were a big box on your chest – of course he’d be on the telephone, and he’d turn the telephone upside down, so that the earpiece would be at his chest, and he’d be talking to the mouthpiece, one day he was doing this in the control tower and a guy up there leant over and turned the phone around for him! Of course Dave also had a bit of vision problem, and one day he shocked the guy in the tower by saying put your finger on the line, where do I have to sign?

Dave certainly was a worry, but he was experienced, and with no one else on hand, Alan was at ends to hold the whole operation together. Dave’s record at FIA, unsurprisingly, was not without fault.

When you went down to Bridport there were sheep and sometimes cattle on the runway – cause it was a farmer’s paddock. But we had them all trained, so you’d fly down the runway, over the top of where you were going to land then they’d all go out to the side, and only then would you come down and land.

Dave Burke on one occasion, the sheep all moved out, then one sheep decided it might run back on in front of him and he hit it. He tried not to hit it, and finished up digging the wingtip into the ground. So we spent months and months and month repairing that aeroplane all in Bridport.

With this unlucky exception FIA’s planes were very well looked after, one policy at FIA was to ensure that the aeroplanes spent their time in the hanger if they weren’t flying:

Except when they had to stay out over night at Flinders Island where we didn’t have a hanger, FIA’s planes stayed in the hanger when they weren’t being flown. Every night they’d put the planes away in the hanger. Brain and Brown would wheel their aeroplanes out on a Monday morning and put them away on Friday night. Now when they [DCA] started to think about these wooden spared wings [2]they came around to all the different companies to check their planes wings to see how the old wooden ones were holding up.

First up they had a look at FIC[3] and they’d drill holes in the wing to check the wood. The wing was long enough to check in six places so they drilled there at the root, near the pilot, perfect: then out near the wingtip, perfect; one in the center, perfect. And the guy running the inspection said, ‘shame to spoil it by drilling anymore holes, this aeroplane is fine.

The next plane up was BAB, Brain and Brown. With their plane theu didn’t worry about this drill a hole business, they just pushed their thumb up into the soggy rotten wood! That aeroplane never ran from that day on.[4]

Bruce loved this story, and laughed accordingly. It was amazing to feel the warmth that the memories of Alan engendered.

Alan and his pilots were to fly to Flinders Island for many years to come. And so too Flinders Island Airlines grew to become a prosperous charter airline, which flew all around Victoria and further afield. However, in the late 1950s competition for airfreight escalated considerable. Despite this Alan’s airline continued to thrive through dedication, reliability and persistence. A key pillar in the continued enlargement of FIA’s scope of business was a long-term association with a well-known Melbourne newspaper, that Alan had first been employed to sell when he was only a boy.

[2] Wooden spars – these were the heart of the wing. When you built the aeroplane it was the spine that you would hang everything else off as you went.

[3] FIC was Flinders Island Airlines’ third plane.

[4] Even though this story suggests a rivalry of sorts there was no animosity in anyone’s hearts when speaking of Brain and Brown.

Flinders Island Airlines soon found its feet, servicing fisherman on Flinders Island who had been having great difficulty securing freighters to transport their crayfish to the markets in Melbourne. Although the first recorded flight to Flinders Island took place on 1st of April 1946, even at the time that FIA started up business there was no regular service to the island. In addition to Flinders Island he also flew to Bridport and St. Helens on Tasmania’s northeast coast.

They used to growl all the time, “Can’t get a freighter! We ring up and they promise us a freighter!” … Well, I knew there was a good potential there, so I decided to run to Flinders Island. That’s why I called it Flinders Island Airlines. We could get tons of fish – all the fish in the world – but to make a profit you have to get freight down, and there was no freight going to Flinders Island. Because Flinders Island is part of Tasmania … they’d always got their supplies from Launceston in the luggers – the old ships. That was the way they always did things and they were happy with that arrangement. I used to go around with all sorts of things and ask if they wanted it and they’d say, “Oh no, no.” They couldn’t do it. “We deal with so-and-so in Launceston.

They’ve looked after us for fifty years and we’re not going to change.” So I started to go into the market and buy what I knew they couldn’t get – like fresh fruit, tomatoes, peaches, bananas and that sort of thing – because everything they got came from Melbourne, but it went by ship to Launceston, got rehashed on the wharf and eventually put on another ship, then went to Flinders Island. It was all right for spuds and some of that sort of stuff, but for soft fruits … they never, ever had them.

Then they got interested. I filled up an old truck we bought and said, “Look, we can offer you some of this.” “Oh,” they said, “We’d like to try some of those!” Then we got on to cauliflowers, for instance, and cabbages because they deteriorate fairly quickly. You send a cauli on two ship journeys and it gets crushed up and brown. We can pick them up at the wholesale market and drive them to Moorabbin, fly them to the island, put them on our truck and now its only three or four hours since they’ve left the market – quicker than you’d get them in your fruit shop in Melbourne.

We were always taking stuff to the island, but all the while we were bringing things back. It was nearly all crayfish, because crayfish were very profitable. Cray has two or three months when it’s not on, but there’s garfish and other stuff there. We’d take mutton birds when they were in season. We used to bring the crays up alive and cook them in Prahran. We hired an old dairy in Alfred Street and we cooked them there and then sold it in the market; we eventually got a stall in the market.

Barry Allen recalled that in the early days of the crayfish business Bill Dwyer was charged with illegally selling fish to hotels around South Melbourne:

Defending himself, he pleaded not guilty. Asked by the magistrate what he did sell, Bill replied, “I sold Crustaceans sir, not fish as charged!” The magistrate banged his gavel down and smiled saying, “Not guilty, case dismissed!”

As Alan told us this he knocked his hand down then with a grin pronounced the judges Verdict. What fun Bill and Alan must have had. Tim remembered Alan’s creativity in another light:

We’d be doing the papers and the crays and the fruit and veggies, and there would sometimes be 4 planes sometimes 6 planes, but the idea was to do it in the most economical way. Alan had a knack of figuring out what to put on each plane, and he used to mull over it for a few minutes and then tell everyone else how best to do it. He was inventive. It was Melbourne cup day and we were going to deliver the papers to Corowa. But the plane left Melbourne while the Cup was being run. So what Alan did was he had a card table set up in the middle of the plane and they got the results over the radio in the plane. So what they then did was to have a large stamp. And they printed the winners on the paper! So these papers had been two hours on the plane and the Melbourne Cup had only been run an hour a go and these papers with the fresh results were out on the street. And they all couldn’t understand how the papers had got here with the results half an hour after the race had been run.
Flinders Island Airlines worked very well as a partnership because Alan and Bill had a great working relationship.

Bill Dwyer looked after the fish – anything to do with aeroplanes was me. If someone wanted fifty crayfish for a do on Saturday, as often they did, I’d say, “See Bill Dwyer.” If someone wanted to hire an aeroplane and they asked Bill he’d say, “See Alan Rea.” We never crossed, we never interfered, and that worked well because partnerships can be a problem.

It is likely that it was only because they had such a strong friendship that Alan and Bill were able to survive. Business often lagged to begin with.

I remember when Bill and I first started the airline, we were having a hard time. We had absolutely no money at all. This particular night we had a few crays on the back of the truck. We had an old truck that had no damn fenders over the front wheel. The coppers were always onto us, but we’d say, “Oh, we’re on the way now to the body builders to have them put on.” After you’d met the same coppers again they’d say, “We heard that story a month ago!” This particular night, we’re absolutely broke and were in Flinders Street and we’ve got a few crays on the back of the truck and we’re trying to sell them to get a few bob. And the coppers were onto us, “Move on, move on, move on.” I said, “Listen, Bill, we’ll have to give it up.” It was my turn to bring the truck home. Bill lived in Carlton and I lived in Caulfield. This night we had a shilling between us. Instead of going home Bill was either going to go to the pie man – there used to be a pie man in Flinders Street outside the station where you could get a pie and coffee for a shilling – or he was going to use the shilling to take a bus north to go and see his dying Granddad. We had the shilling and I gave it to Bill. I said, “I’m going home. I’ve got the truck, I’ve got a meal at home.” [I] gave him the shilling, but he still hadn’t decided. So he tossed the shilling up – the pie or Granddad? – and Granddad won. He didn’t have anything to eat; he went up to see his dying Granddad.

After the war you could buy a lot of stuff from disposals. I bought a bomber from the Air Force – one I paid £31 for. All Air Force aeroplanes, whenever they land, they’re immediately filled up with petrol, because if an emergency comes and the aeroplane has to go look for a tanker, they’ll all have very red faces. They fill them up – and the one I bought was full. The old Anson had 140 gallons of aviation spirit and I paid £31 for the lot. The petrol was worth more than that! I asked them about petrol and they said, “Sure. Petrol’s cheap!” – and they gave me another container of it.

Dad came out of the war and all he could do was fly and work on the farm. He was on the dairy farm for a while, but he was growing something that his dad didn’t want him to so he just walked off. So he went and bought two Avro Ansons from the War disposals. He sold one for the cost of the two. So the one he had cost him nothing. He flew out of Essendon airport he went and got an airline liscence, under the name W T Dwyer Airlines to fly from Melbourne to Tasmania. He flew the first crayfish to Melbourne for commercial purposes and his freight liscence was the first given to a returned pilot from world war two by the department of civil aviation. The newspapers said he owned most of his to his enthusiasm and persistence; he hasn’t had an easy passage.

Bill was flying out of Essendon, so he needed an engineer, so he got in touch with a guy named Ted Allen, and Ted was actually working on the Golf Course previous, so Dad got him onboard. And he’d fly down to St. Helens and Flinders Island, and Ted would go with him, and sleep on top of the crays. That went on for a while, then they got moved to Moorabbin airport. He’d been next to Reg Ansett’s hangar when he was starting up at Essendon. Dad went to Moorabbin, There was a study for the FERNO group , and they needed an aerial survey of them, they had to map all the islands. And I think the people that were running this knew Alan and wanted him to do the flying. So that’s how they got together. So Dad was supplying the plane and Alan was doing the flying. I think that what happened next was they formed Flinders Island Airlines together. So W T Airlines became Flinders Island Airlines, and they had fifty-fifty share each in the business. Alan took care of the airline part of the business and dad had the fish part under control, and that was it!

Part 2 above

Thank you

Dan