Qantas by George!

A fascinating insight into early Australian aviation, seen through the long and interesting life of 91-year-old George Roberts, who joined Qantas in his early twenties, and over the next 38 years rose to great heights within the organization. George is still involved with maintaining the company's archives. George Roberts was born in Ipswich, Queensland in 1909. He saw his first aeroplane, which landed is a paddock near his house when he was eight, and took his first flight is a flying boat on Moreton Bay in 1920 when he was ten. George, who is now over 90 is the oldest living former employee of Qantas. His life has been both fortunate and adventurous, spanning two centuries and the whole modern history of trains, planes and automobiles. His father once built the former; George and his elder brother Norm (also a Qantas engineer) spent much of their lives pre-Qantas building, racing and sometimes crashing the latter. They were hot-rodders before the term existed, souping up Model T Fords and speed-trialling them on Southport's Main Beach before it was the Gold Coast. They built planes too, like the tiny Flying Flea, using plans published in 'Newnes Practical Mechanics' magazine. Their Flea, which really did fly, now hangs in the Queensland Museum. The Roberts boys were gifted engineers and in Qantas hangars from Perth to Surabaya and Rose Bay, they found the biggest tool shed a kid could ever want. This is the story of an Australian larrikin with a passion for engines, aeroplanes and speed, a man who witnessed and took part in many of the great events of the first century of Australian aviation. George has forgotten nothing, so his story is absorbing, often wildly funny and uniquely Australian. Many of the stories have never been told before not many of the photographs previously published.