Six years after the Wright Brothers made the world’s first controlled, sustained flight of an engine-powered aircraft in the US, Harry Houdini—yes, that Houdini, the famous Hungarian-American escape artist and stunt performer—set a similarly impressive record in the small town of Diggers Rest, Victoria.
Diggers Rest is now considered an outer Melbourne suburb, at about 35 kilometres from the CBD on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country, but back then it was a village surrounded by farmland, and an important stopping spot on the road to the Bendigo goldfields.
As the sun rose over a murky dam on the morning of 18 March 1910 in a Diggers Rest field, Houdini completed what is claimed to be the first powered aeroplane flight in Australia. An avid aviator, he purchased a French Voisin biplane just for the occasion and had it shipped to our shores. An ostentatiously expensive early specimen, it looked like a paper kite with a bit of landing gear attached, and its tiny engine was housed beneath only wood and cloth panels.
It took Houdini three attempts to properly achieve his goal, made in front of about 30 witnesses, including Houdini’s co-stage performer and wife Bess, on private land known as Plumpton Paddock. The first try saw him airborne for only a minute, and on the second attempt he almost crashed while trying to land. The third time he managed to fly skyward for about 3.5 minutes, covering a distance of more than three kilometres. The Australian daily morning newspaper of the time, The Argus described the soaring plane as looking “like a huge white bird as it sailed gracefully round.”
Houdini flew again the following day, despite dangerously windy conditions, in front of a bigger crowd of around 100 people. And he flew again the day after that, achieving his longest Australian flight of more than 7.5 minutes. Certificates were signed by an array of spectator witnesses each day, verifying Houdini’s achievements.
The stunt was a long time coming, and did not happen without hiccups. Weather was monitored for a month before a day was deemed suitable for flying such a flimsy aircraft. And Houdini’s initial attempt to launch the plane, a day earlier, was a complete failure. Houdini’s personal mechanic eventually made a fateful adjustment to the rudder, fixing the initial problem and helping Houdini finally fly into the record books.
There seems to be some discrepancies in the records, and the exact durations, lengths and altitudes of the short flights vary, depending on the source referenced. And little details seem lost and bent by time, particularly those that lack the glamour of being associated with celebrity.
The Sydney Morning Herald makes a miserable reference to an Australian pilot, Mr Rolf C. Banks, who stood in the field with Houdini for that anxious month before take-off, monitoring the weather alongside his more famous rival in the competition to become the first to fly in Australia. But who’s ever heard of him?
And what if I told you that in fact, Houdini was probably not actually the first person to fly a powered aircraft in Australia after all? Does that mean the little Victorian town of Diggers Rest can’t quite claim the honour either?
There are reports that on 9 December 1909 (three months before Houdini’s paddock flight), 25-year-old engineer Colin Defries flew an imported Wright machine at a racecourse in Sydney. He was airborne for barely more than a minute, and a faulty spark plug caused the aircraft to lose power. It was declared that Defries did not display control over the craft, and his attempt to fly was not officially recognised.
Then on 17 March 1910 (the day before Houdini’s stunt), a young mechanic called Fred Custance successfully flew an imported Bleriot aircraft owned by his employer for five minutes over a paddock near Adelaide. With only four witnesses and no official certification, his quiet achievement was utterly overshadowed by the event—and the celebrity—of the following day.
When asked how he felt after his flight, Houdini was reported to have responded positively by the Leader: “‘I am perfectly satisfied,’ remarked Houdini afterwards. ‘I can now fly, and my machine is a perfect piece of mechanism. I have never enjoyed any experience so much.’”