Oswald Watt - Early Career

Early Career

Born on 11 February 1878 in Bournemouth, England, Oswald Watt was the youngest son of John Brown Watt, a Scot who had migrated to New South Wales in 1842 and became a successful merchant and politician, frequently representing his state on overseas missions. Oswald's Australian-born mother, Mary Jane, died when he was one and shortly afterwards the family relocated to Sydney. Oswald was sent back to England at the age of eleven to complete his schooling at Clifton College, Bristol, before going on to study at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1899. Returning to Sydney in 1900, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the New South Wales Scottish Rifles, a Militia unit, and in 1902 was appointed an aide-de-camp to the Governor of New South Wales. On 27 September that year, he married Muriel Williams at St. John's Anglican Church in Toorak, Victoria; the couple had one son.

Watt's family was wealthy, and he was able to establish himself as a grazier by purchasing several cattle stations in New South Wales and Queensland. Travelling abroad again, he obtained his Master of Arts degree from Cambridge in 1904. In October the following year he was promoted to captain in the Scottish Rifles. On a subsequent trip to England he took flying lessons at the Bristol aviation school on Salisbury Plain, where his fellow students included Eric Harrison. Watt attained his Royal Aero Club certificate, no. 112, on 1 August 1911, becoming the first Australian citizen so qualified. Upon his return to Australia later that year, he publicly declared that the time was "rapidly approaching when an aero corps have to be inaugurated" as part of the country's "military defence scheme". In March 1912, Watt recommended a location in Canberra near the Royal Military College, Duntroon, as a base for the Army's proposed Central Flying School. However this site was rejected by the school's nominated commander, Lieutenant Henry Petre, owing to its altitude and nearby mountainous terrain. Petre eventually chose 297 hectares at Point Cook, Victoria, an area suitable for seaplanes as well as land-based aircraft, to become the "birthplace of Australian military aviation". Watt also advocated manufacturing foreign-designed aircraft under licence in Australia, but this would not be pursued until after World War I. In 1913 he was divorced on the grounds of his "misconduct" with actress Ivy Schilling, and lost custody of his son in the judgment. He then went to Egypt where he purchased and practised flying a Blériot XI monoplane; while there he met leading French aviators including Louis Blériot and Roland Garros.