The Western Australian Centenary Air Race (also known as the East-West Air Race) was a 2,450 miles (3,940 km) air race held in 1929 from Sydney to Perth to commemorate the Western Australia Centenary.
The £1000 handicap winner was Horrie Miller and the £300 fastest overall time prize was won by Briton Geoffrey De Havilland (22 hours 50 minutes 23 seconds), who flew the course solo, the only competitor to do so, in a modified De Havilland Gipsy Moth.
Determining results in the handicap event was found to be a difficult task, with type of machine, weather conditions, wind direction and strength of wind for each half day's hop, supplemented by times of starting being taken into consideration.
700 people had turned out at Kalgoorlie to see the competitors off on the final leg of the race. Victorian C.D. Pratt and his co-pilot J.R. Guthrie were both seriously injured when their Gipsy Moth Corio crashed near Baandee, 230 kilometres (140 mi) East of Perth. Weather conditions after leaving Tammin were said to be atrocious, with at least one forced landing and one crash.
The 17 teams left from Mascot in Sydney on 29 September 1929 and 14 managed to finish at Maylands Aerodrome on Sunday 7 October.
Read more about Western Australian Centenary Air Race: Fastest Times, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words western, australian, air and/or race:
“It appeared that he had once represented his tribe at Augusta, and also once at Washington, where he had met some Western chiefs. He had been consulted at Augusta, and gave advice, which he said was followed, respecting the eastern boundary of Maine, as determined by highlands and streams, at the time of the difficulties on that side. He was employed with the surveyors on the line. Also he called on Daniel Webster in Boston, at the time of his Bunker Hill oration.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The Australian mind, I can state with authority, is easily boggled.”
—Charles Osborne (b. 1927)
“For in the air all lovers meet
After they’ve hated out their love....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“In nothing was slavery so savage and relentless as in its attempted destruction of the family instincts of the Negro race in America. Individuals, not families; shelters, not homes; herding, not marriages, were the cardinal sins in that system of horrors.”
—Fannie Barrier Williams (1855–1944)