IT WAS in 1930 that Oscar Garden captured the imagination of Australians and New Zealanders (and the Isle of Man and Scotland) with an extraordinary solo flight from England to Australia in a second-hand open cockpit Gipsy Moth he had named Kia Ora — Maori for good luck.

As no one had been expecting him at the dusty airstrip at Wyndham, north-west Australia, this earned him the nickname “The Sundowner of the Skies”, a name which was to stay with him for the rest of his life. Sundowner is an Australian term meaning a wandering swagman who appears unexpectedly at sunset. This sudden unexpected appearance echoed his grandfather’s unexpected arrival in Orkney with a great business idea!

To fly from England to Australia in those days was a hugely dangerous feat and what made my father’s flight so extraordinary (and undoubtedly foolhardy) is that he was a novice. When he had set out from Croydon on October 16th, with a packet of sandwiches on his lap, he had a mere 39 hours’ flying experience. His flight of 18 days had only been bettered by Charles Kingsford Smith and Bert Hinkler — pioneer aviators with 14 and 10 years’ experience respectively before their record-breaking flights. My father, however, had not been out to break any flying records — his flight was purely a business one.

Earlier that year, feeling restless and directionless, he had sailed back to England to visit relatives. On board someone suggested that with his background in cars he should learn to fly, an idea that immediately appealed to him. Within weeks and after only 12 hours’ dual instruction at Norwich Aero Club he got an “A” licence (equivalent to today’s private pilot licence). However, a commercial licence required 100-hours’ solo flying. My father decided it would be cheaper to buy his own plane and fly to Australia in “leisurely stages” to accumulate enough hours rather than doing it all through an aero club.

For £450, plus a trade-in of his car, he bought a second-hand Gipsy Moth. He learnt to read a compass and took cross-country flights to improve his navigation, fixed a spare propeller to the side of the plane and had an extra tank installed to give it a range of about 1300km. Short of funds, he decided to take the minimum of spares — two valve springs and valves.

Flying in those days was hazardous for there were no radios, beacons or search and rescue services. It required not only a high degree of flying and engineering skill, but also stamina, courage, luck and, usually, experience. It is difficult now to imagine these early aviators hunched up in open cockpits with no protection from the weather, no toilets, no radio or beacons. They flew up to 12 hours during the day, hand-pumping petrol from the spare tank, stopping only to refuel. They flew over deserts, mountain ranges and oceans, through turbulence, sandstorms and tropical storms. Meals were often insufficient and irregular. They snatched a few hours of sleep when they could.

My father had several forced landings. One was in Syria when he ran out of fuel. After trekking for miles to find help in the desert, he returned to find his plane surrounded by hundreds of “frightened Arabs”. Exhausted and thirsty, he tried in vain to motion for a drink, but they kept bringing him hard-boiled eggs.

In central India, he experienced a near-disaster because of wrong directions. After circling for half an hour in the dark, hoping for signals, he set the plane down in a field, crashing and barely missing some trees. The plane capsized, smashing the propeller. With the help of locals, he righted the plane, installed the spare propeller and waited for morning. Then monsoon rains turned the field into a bog and it took hours for about 50 helpers to tow the machine to a dry strip.

He then made his way to Calcutta, Burma and Java. In Indonesia he stayed the night with a tribe reported to be head-hunters. Even though he was exhausted and “bitten alive with mosquitos” he did the maintenance work on his plane, with one of the natives holding a torch. He was lucky to find two broken valve springs in the engine, for if he had not replaced these he would have ended up in the Timor Sea.

The next day, after flying to Koepang to refuel, he braced himself for the 800km over the “shark-infested” Timor Sea. With great relief he reached Wyndham in the north of Australia by nightfall. Previous aviators had all made landfall at Darwin.

But the worst stretch of the whole trip was still ahead. He was told he was “mad” to try and fly across the central desert for no one else had succeeded (in fact two aviators had died there the year before). My father was later to describe the flight as “a suicide trip” and to say he was “damned lucky to get to Alice Springs”. Before he left he had been persuaded to take some water, so he filled six empty beer bottles and placed them in the front cockpit in case of a forced landing. However he then endured seven hours of “blind flying through an inferno” with the water out of reach and his head stuck over the side, as there was little visibility due to a red dust storm.

Oscar Garden flying over Melbourne on November 10, 1930. He was on his way to Canberra, where he was given a lunch at the Federal Parliament House in honour of his epic flight.

After Alice Springs he flew to Broken Hill and then to Sydney where a large crowd was waiting to greet him. Photos taken at the time show an extremely sunburnt face! A few weeks later in New Zealand he received a hero’s welcome, especially in Timaru, Christchurch and Dunedin where many Scottish families had settled.

My father’s flying career was just starting. After several months in New Zealand giving joyrides (these lasted about ten minutes and cost twelve shillings — a lot of money in those Depression years) in April 1931 he returned to England to perfect his skills of instrument flying and learn acrobatic flying at Hamble in Hampshire. There he won their first trophy for blind flying training.

At the end of the year he set up a company, Skywork, with John Tranum the world famous parachutist and they went to South Africa to put on that country’s first flying circus. This disbanded after a few months, but with the Simmonds Spartan plane he received as his share of the venture, my father spent several years giving joyrides throughout Africa and the Middle East.

In 1934 he settled down to become a commercial pilot. His first job was with the Scottish Motor Traction Company’s Highland Airways flying Fox Moths. The following year he was offered a job with the newly established airline company, United Airways, and became the superintendent of a new route from Liverpool to the Isle of Man and Belfast. By 1935 United Airways merged with a number of companies that united to form British Airways.

Over the next few years my father made various inaugural flights throughout Britain and Europe. After earning his first class navigator’s licence he moved to Imperial Airways and in 1938 began flying Short S-23 Empire flying boats to South Africa and Asia. In 1940 he jumped at the chance of joining the fledgling New Zealand airline, Tasman Empire Airways Limited (TEAL) and in April delivered their second flying boat Awarua from England to New Zealand — an 18-day trip. He became both the operations manager and chief pilot and in his book Airline (1979), Ian Driscoll wrote: “It was Garden who laid the foundations on which TEAL and Air New Zealand built a reputation for flight safety and operational proficiency which is renowned among world airlines.”

After several disagreements with management over its future direction and policies, my father resigned from TEAL in 1947 and severed all ties with aviation. For the rest of his life he became a virtual recluse. Apart from his immediate family he had minimal contact with other people and hated socialising. He became a market gardener and struggled to keep us fed and clothed! He spent long hours in his glasshouse by himself tending his tomato plants with the same dedication and attention he once paid to his precious Gipsy Moth, Kia Ora. Fellow growers said that he grew tomatoes the way he once flew aeroplanes — to perfection. Perfectionism was a trait he clearly got from his grandfather — the “Merchant Prince of Orkney”.

My father remained staunchly a Scot until his death in 1997 at the age of 93 and never took out New Zealand citizenship. He was a very eccentric and aloof character and frankly I couldn’t wait to leave home and get away from him! Now I am exploring his past, it fascinates me and has helped me understand him better.

Regardless of his foibles, he deserves to better known for he was one of the few pioneer aviators to survive the trailblazing era of the 1920s and early 30s. Most died in crashes. He also went on to forge a career in commercial aviation. New Zealand literary agent Ray Richards, a navy flyer in the Pacific War, recently remarked to me: ‘The Australian Encyclopaedia appears to have only one line for Oscar Garden. That’s in a four-page chart of landmarks in aviation. So he’s a forgotten hero, perhaps waiting to be reconstructed in a biography.”

My father clearly inherited the pioneering and adventurous spirit of both his father and his grandfather. But the courage and sheer determination he showed during his flying years can also be seen in the life of his Scottish grandfather — the herdy boy born into poverty who became the “Merchant Prince of Orkney”. I salute the three of them.

* Mary Garden would be pleased to hear from any readers who may have information, anecdotes or photographs relating to the Garden family. Her address is 102 Storrs Road, Peachester, Qld 4519, Australia. E-mail: mary.garden@bigpond.com

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