Read Online Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men by Peter Fitzsimons - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Peter Fitzsimons
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continued with his work at CSR and followed as closely as he could what was happening with the war, hoping fervently that there would be enough of it left for him to fight in by the time he got there.
An interesting bloke, George Hubert Wilkins. As the thirteenth and last progeny of a struggling pastoral family of South Australia, he had become fascinated with the natural world while spending time as a child with the local Aboriginal tribe, before becoming equally absorbed in things mechanical and scientific via his education at a technical school in Adelaide. At a young age he had formed a theory that the world’s weather was connected, and that if mankind could achieve an understanding of climate patterns in the polar regions, it might enable accurate predictions to be made as to when the devastating droughts he was growing up with in South Australia would hit.
Put together, his theory had sent him on a peripatetic course around the world, which had seen him stow away as a seventeen-year-old on a ship bound for Africa in 1909, only to be kidnapped in Algeria in 1910, before making his escape and heading to London to become a pilot and work as a photographer in the company of a journalist from Yanovka in the Ukraine by the name of Leon Trotsky. He then found work as a war correspondent in the Turkey–Bulgaria war of 1912, where he was captured and nearly killed by firing squad and finally became a member of what was intended to be a five-year expedition to the Arctic regions way north of Canada…which…was where he was now, asleep in an igloo just inside of the Arctic Circle and dreaming of an easier way to do such an exploration. By aeroplane! 8 By flying over the beautiful white wonderland, free as a bird, instead of endlessly trudging through it with ice-cold feet in snowshoes, fighting frostbite as yapping husky dogs hauled sleds through the eternal whiteness. True, in a plane there would the risk of great turbulence in a blizzard and being heavily shaken by the buffeting winds, shaken…shaken…
Oh. He was actually being shaken awake. It was a trapper, someone he’d never seen before, a stranger who had just made his way into camp. An enormous man with snow still on his beard and the squinty eyes of one who has spent too much time trying to shield himself from snowblindness. And he had a couple of very interesting bits of news.
The first, after a bit of chitchat, was that, ‘that damn fool scientist Wilkins has died after shanghaiing his crew’. 9 Not at all offended, Wilkins was overjoyed to have been called a ‘scientist’, and didn’t bother to reveal either his identity or the fact that he had shanghaied no-one.
Which was as well, because the second bit of information was even more stunning…‘By the way,’ the fellow asked him, ‘have you heard the news?’ 10
What news?
War. A big one. The last thing the trapper had heard was that the British were advancing through Germany towards Berlin at a rate of 20 miles a day, so the show was no doubt over.
A war , involving the British Empire and hence Australia, too, and he, George Wilkins, wasn’t part of it? Wilkins was stricken. It didn’t seem right. A feeling that the Arctic was not the place for him to be was compounded shortly afterwards when he received word that his father had died after a long illness, leaving his mother a widow. Despite his contract with Vilhajalmur Stefansson to stay in the Arctic for another year, 11 Wilkins resolved to briefly return home to Australia, see his mother and join up to the war effort at the first opportunity. He too only hoped that it might still be going by the time he could get there…
In fact, after the first few months had passed there was still plenty of war to go around for everybody who wanted a part of it. And rather than British forces advancing through Germany towards Berlin, as Wilkins had first heard, it was close to the other way around. The troops of Kaiser Wilhelm II had stormed across the
An interesting bloke, George Hubert Wilkins. As the thirteenth and last progeny of a struggling pastoral family of South Australia, he had become fascinated with the natural world while spending time as a child with the local Aboriginal tribe, before becoming equally absorbed in things mechanical and scientific via his education at a technical school in Adelaide. At a young age he had formed a theory that the world’s weather was connected, and that if mankind could achieve an understanding of climate patterns in the polar regions, it might enable accurate predictions to be made as to when the devastating droughts he was growing up with in South Australia would hit.
Put together, his theory had sent him on a peripatetic course around the world, which had seen him stow away as a seventeen-year-old on a ship bound for Africa in 1909, only to be kidnapped in Algeria in 1910, before making his escape and heading to London to become a pilot and work as a photographer in the company of a journalist from Yanovka in the Ukraine by the name of Leon Trotsky. He then found work as a war correspondent in the Turkey–Bulgaria war of 1912, where he was captured and nearly killed by firing squad and finally became a member of what was intended to be a five-year expedition to the Arctic regions way north of Canada…which…was where he was now, asleep in an igloo just inside of the Arctic Circle and dreaming of an easier way to do such an exploration. By aeroplane! 8 By flying over the beautiful white wonderland, free as a bird, instead of endlessly trudging through it with ice-cold feet in snowshoes, fighting frostbite as yapping husky dogs hauled sleds through the eternal whiteness. True, in a plane there would the risk of great turbulence in a blizzard and being heavily shaken by the buffeting winds, shaken…shaken…
Oh. He was actually being shaken awake. It was a trapper, someone he’d never seen before, a stranger who had just made his way into camp. An enormous man with snow still on his beard and the squinty eyes of one who has spent too much time trying to shield himself from snowblindness. And he had a couple of very interesting bits of news.
The first, after a bit of chitchat, was that, ‘that damn fool scientist Wilkins has died after shanghaiing his crew’. 9 Not at all offended, Wilkins was overjoyed to have been called a ‘scientist’, and didn’t bother to reveal either his identity or the fact that he had shanghaied no-one.
Which was as well, because the second bit of information was even more stunning…‘By the way,’ the fellow asked him, ‘have you heard the news?’ 10
What news?
War. A big one. The last thing the trapper had heard was that the British were advancing through Germany towards Berlin at a rate of 20 miles a day, so the show was no doubt over.
A war , involving the British Empire and hence Australia, too, and he, George Wilkins, wasn’t part of it? Wilkins was stricken. It didn’t seem right. A feeling that the Arctic was not the place for him to be was compounded shortly afterwards when he received word that his father had died after a long illness, leaving his mother a widow. Despite his contract with Vilhajalmur Stefansson to stay in the Arctic for another year, 11 Wilkins resolved to briefly return home to Australia, see his mother and join up to the war effort at the first opportunity. He too only hoped that it might still be going by the time he could get there…
In fact, after the first few months had passed there was still plenty of war to go around for everybody who wanted a part of it. And rather than British forces advancing through Germany towards Berlin, as Wilkins had first heard, it was close to the other way around. The troops of Kaiser Wilhelm II had stormed across the
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