Red Dust Tapes
OVER 55 YEARS AGO multi-award-winning journalist John Francis interviewed ageing Australian Outback characters, before their voices were lost in the red dust.
THIS IS UNIQUE Aussie history.
NEARLY ALL lived largely solitary lives, in the harsh and lonely inland, on the edge of deserts, in a world of searing droughts, and occasional fierce floods.
THEY WERE prospectors, sheep and cattle men, boundary riders, drovers, railway workers, truck drivers, Aboriginal groups, and isolated but hardy women.
AUSTRALIA'S AVIATION HISTORY also started in the red dust. You'll hear interviews with some of Australia's most famous pioneer airmen (many of whom started flying in the First World War), who used aircraft to make the Outback a little less lonely.
JOHN ALSO interviews the descendants of other unique characters, reads fascinating tales from Australia's Outback past, and spins tales of his own red dust adventures.
WEBSITE: www.reddusttapes.au
Red Dust Tapes
‘You had to overcome their fear’. Exclusive interview with co-founder of Qantas
SEASON 1, EPISODE 9
It was bitterly cold up there, in leather cap and goggles, in the open cockpit. Turbulence in North Queensland skies was often terrifying. Passengers could do nothing but hang on and bear it, hopefully holding something to catch the vomit.
And on landing, ‘sometimes the only edifice on the aerodrome was a little tin shed’, Sir Hudson told me. ‘On a cold morning you’d see the poor passengers making a sprint for this little tin shed.’
Sir Hudson Fysh was co-founder of the Australian flagship airline, Qantas. I interviewed him in 1970. This was a year before the first 747 Jumbo took to our skies, and three years before Concorde first flew.
We spoke to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his scrappy little airline that started in the red dust of inland Queensland not long after World War One, and quickly grew to take on the world.
Sir Hudson was a natural storyteller. He shared insights into the rugged flying conditions for passengers and pilots alike; the emotions of those early passengers who in many ways were like guinea pigs; and the lows and highs of running an airline between the world wars – including the romance of the flying boats – and on into the jet age.