Avro 534 Baby
“Mon Repos” – Bert Hinkler’s house
This building once sat over 16,000 kilometres away amongst the oak trees of Thornhill Estate in Sholing, Southampton, England.
Built in 1925, it was named “Mon Repos” after the Bundaberg beach where the young Bert Hinkler tested his homemade gliders.
Bert Hinkler shared “Mon Repos” with his partner Nance Jarvis from 1925 until his death in 1933.
Close to Bert’s workplace, the AV Roe Experimental Works at Hamble, “Mon Repos” became a haven for his many friends and colleagues from the aviation industry.
Bert planned most of his record-breaking solo flights in the living room. He used the secluded fields around the original site to carry out tests on the “Ibis”, the amphibious aircraft he designed and built with Roland Bound in 1929.
After Bert died, Nance continued to live in the house until 1952 when she emigrated to South Africa. It then became the property of the Southampton City Council and home to a number of families. In 1982 “Mon Repos” was listed for demolition to make way for a block of retirement units.
Bundaberg resident and long-time Hinkler admirer Lex Rowland became concerned that such an historic building might be destroyed. In response to a national advertisement for projects to support the Australian bicentenary celebrations Lex came up with a plan to relocate the house to Bundaberg, Hinkler’s birthplace, and create a museum in Hinkler’s honour.
Such an undertaking had only been attempted once before in Australia’s history, the relocation of Captain Cook’s cottage from England to Melbourne in 1934. However, community support for the proposal showed this was a building of immense national interest.
With only weeks remaining to meet the Southampton City Council’s demolition deadlines, the Bundaberg Bicentennial Committee appointed a subcommittee to plan the relocation.
In May 1983 the three-man dismantling team set off for the United Kingdom to effect the brick by brick pull down of “Mon Repos” house. A month later, the house was shipped to Australia in two 20 tonne containers.
Here in the grounds of the newly-created Bundaberg Botanic Gardens “Mon Repos” was painstakingly rebuilt under the control of Site Manager, A E Bent, and the Rotary Club of East Bundaberg with S C Lohse and J A Rowland assisting.
Hinkler House Memorial Museum opened on 16 June 1984. The adjoining Hinkler Hall of Aviation opened on 8 December 2008.
Hinkler House Memorial Museum gratefully acknowledges the support of the Committee and the loyal group of friends and volunteers who made the project possible. [Ref: Plaque at Mon Repos]
*Squadron Leader H J L Hinkler, AFC DSM.
Herbert John Louis (Bert) Hinkler, chief test pilot at the Hamble Experimental Establishment of A V Roe & Co, and world-renowned long distance aviator and inventor.
His pioneering solo flights in light aeroplanes included England to Australia (1928) and Canada to England, via Brazil and West Africa (1931).
Bert Hinkler was born at Bundaberg, Queensland, on 8 December 1892, and lost his life in an aircraft crash on Mount Pratomagno, Italy, on 7 January 1933, while on a flight to Australia. [Ref: Plaque in Botanic Garden]
In 1933 Hinkler left Heathrow on 7 January in his Puss Moth, on a flight to Australia and disappeared. The crashed plane and Hinkler’s body were found on the northern slopes of Pratomagno in the Apennines between Florence and Arezzo, Italy, on 27 April. He had survived the crash and died outside the wreckage. On Mussolini’s orders he was buried in Florence with full military honours. [Ref: Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 9, (MUP) 1983 article by E P Wixted]
HINKLER’S DARING EXPLOITS
The following brief account of Lieutenant Bert Hinkler's career appeared in the March issue of the “Aircraft," published in Sydney:-
From England, unheralded, after an absence of seven years, Mr Bert Hinkler landed in Sydney on March 18. With him is the 35 hp (Green) Avro "Baby''— G-EACQ — in which he last year made the brilliant non-stop flight of 650 miles from London to Turin, and which, a few weeks later, and without overhaul, he piloted to second place in the London Aerial Derby.
These two achievements should have brought Australia's leading newspaper men scurrying down to the wharf as soon as his uncommon (but now familiar) name appeared in the “Ascanius” passenger-list. One would have thought so, at any rate. But Hinkler, apparently, is destined to be "without honour in his own country." At the time of writing he has been back six days and no reference to his presence in our midst has yet been published in any Australian paper. He expects to leave Sydney at the end of the month, or early in April, but before returning to his wife in England he will call upon his parents in Bundaberg, Queensland, and say, "Bertie's come home from the war!”
Of diminutive build, the young Queenslander is a veritable dynamo of energy and of almost inexhaustible resource. Whether it be a flight from Australia to New Zealand, a non-stop to Melbourne or Brisbane or any other stunt. On Friday, March 18, as soon as the "Ascanius" had docked, he made a bee-line for Union House, introduced himself, to the Avro agents (A A & E C Ltd), announced that the "Baby" was on board and asked for workshop accommodation at Mascot, which was readily given. Informed that the Royal Agricultural Show would open on the following Monday and that the Avro people would exhibit, he hastened back to the wharf, located the case, got it out of the hold and carted down to Mascot the same afternoon. During the weekend he entirely reassembled the historic machine and bright and early on opening day had the "Baby" on view at the A A & E Co's stand. There the writer found him, chatting with Messrs Nigel Love and W E ("Billy") Hart [both pioneer aviators].
“For sheer perserverance” remarked the last-named member of the party, “Bert is hard to beat. I remember him calling at my office in Sydney about nine or ten years ago, when I was doing a little flying on my own. He had made a special journey all the way from Bundaberg, where he had been experimenting with gliders, and literally begged me to give him a job. Eventually I got "Wizard” Stone [A B Stone, American aviator] to take him as a mechanic. They were together for some time.”
Hinkler said: "I just made my way to England and prowled around the drome at Kingston, sticky-beaking into this, that and the other, until at last Tom Sopwith realised that it would be less trouble to find me a job in his factory than to hunt me off the premises day after day. So he signed me on as a mechanic.”
On the outbreak of war, youth and inches notwithstanding, he was accepted by the RNAS — chiefly on Mr Sopwith's strong recommendation—and September 1914 found him a full-fledged second-class air-mechanic (2/ a day) attached to the Coast Defence Station at Whitley Bay, Northumberland. While there the first Zeppelin ever sighted by a British aeroplane was seen over the coast, and Hinkler enjoys the distinction of being the Observer in an 80-Gnome "Bristol” that was sent up to attack her. The raider immediately headed for the Fatherland, chased by the "Bristol' until some thirty miles out to sea when her pursuer lost their bearings in a cloudbank. Hinkler on this occasion was armed with nothing more formidable than an old rifle and a couple of signalling rockets.
Transferred to France early in l9l6, he took part in the first long-distance air raids on German towns along the Saar Valley: later, from the Dunkirk base, he was engaged in several night bombing raids, on a Handley Page 0/400. Next (on D H 4's) came a series of day-bombing excursions, the objective being a chain of enemy aerodromes scattered throughout Belgium.
In his leisure he patented the Hinkler Double Lewis Gun and got it generally adopted by No 5 Squadron, RNAS. It is noteworthy that his CO was a brother Australian, Wing-Commander S J Goble, now a member of the Commonwealth Air Council and Air Board.
Mr Hinkler obtained his pilot's commission in 1917, while in France and was posted to No 28 Squadron, RAF ('Camels'), stationed in Italy, where he remained until the Armistice.
Last year, suffering acutely from what he describes as "airman's itch”, he procured the “Baby” and fitted it with “a few little gadgets” of his own – notably the movable needle jet for carburettor adjustment, the Hinkler Compass and the Hinkler Altitude-Recorder.
Then, having increased the petrol capacity from 10 gallons to 25, he one day astonished and delighted the entire flying world by making the record (and hitherto unattempted) non-stop flight from London to Turin — now also a matter of history. This accomplished he flew, on to Rome and then back to London, "dropping in" quite casually and unexpectedly in time for the Avro people to feature his "Baby” as star attraction of the Aeronautical Exhibition at the Olympia.
While this exhibition was in progress he suddenly decided to enter his machine for the Aerial Derby (a circuit of 200 miles) for which race he took it straight from the Olympia. The engine had already run for 50 hours without attention, but there was no time for tuning before the Derby. In this contest it was, of course, necessary to run the little "Green" full out. He attained second place in 2 hours 45 minutes, beaten for the premier position by Captain Hammersley, also on an Avro "Baby"— but a brand new one. This performance speaks extremely well for the reliability of the 35 hp engine and has proven a revelation to many flying experts, particularly on the point of petrol consumption, his average on the London-Turin flight being 33 miles to the gallon.
The hero of these exploits is to be guest of honour of the New South Wales Section of the Australian Aero Club, who will entertain him to a banquet at the Hotel Australia.
[Ref: Bundaberg Mail Tuesday 12-4-1921]
