Grantlee Kieza - Bert Hinkler

Benito Mussolini was a worried man as he ran his thick, stubby fingers over his freshly shaved skull. It had been three and a half months since his hero Bert Hinkler slipped away from the almost deserted clutch of sheds at the aerodrome beside the ancient village of Heath Row in Londons west and disappeared; a silvery ghost vanishing into a dark and foggy void.

The worlds press had spent every hour since his mysterious departure speculating over his fate, and the Fascist ruler of Italy paced restlessly across the marble floors of Romes magnificent Villa Torlonia. For weeks, Il Duce had prowled the corridors and chambers of his ornate white palace, past the many portraits of himself, anxious over the disappearance of an adventurer he so admired, a man whose daring and talent summed up everything Mussolini envisaged a superman to be. The Italians had invented

Charles Lindbergh, Charles Kingsford Smith and his own Francesco de Pinedo whom he called the Lord of the Distances were among Mussolinis heroes, but it was Hinklers epic solo flights that had enthralled him ever since the plucky Australian made a world-record air journey from London to Turin in 1920 while Italy was still recovering from the bloodletting that had ensnared Europe. That flight came as Mussolini was about to train as a pilot and to the Fascists there was no more overt symbol of masculinity than a man riding a flying machine high into the heavens to taunt the gods.

Nothing seduces women as flying does, Mussolinis Air Ministry journal once proclaimed, and the dictator knew that few things highlighted his image of masculinity and passion more than taking the controls of an aircraft himself.

In April 1933, however, with Bert Hinkler having disappeared somewhere over Italy, events on the world stage were moving too fast for Mussolinis liking. There were problems in Africa hed have to stamp out, and Hitler he didnt like the look of him, for a start was becoming more of a threat than a nuisance, igniting firestorms everywhere. The Hinkler mystery only heightened Il Duces tension.

Few apart from the airmans widowed mother, Mrs Frances Hinkler back home in Bundaberg, Queensland, believed there was any hope of ever seeing Bert again, and even she was more stressed than her family could remember.

Behind the latticework of her humble weatherboard home, 16,000 kilometres from Mussolinis opulent headquarters, the formidable Old Lady Hinkler, as the neighbours knew her, kept up a brave public face, but sleep was a stranger to her. Every morning since Bert had vanished she scanned the newspapers with tired, red eyes behind her wire-rimmed spectacles. There was precious little information about the search. Precious little that was encouraging, anyway. When Bert had first gone missing the papers in Queensland were also reporting on the national elections in Germany and the faint hopes of a somewhat eccentric housepainter with a Charlie Chaplin moustache. Now, just three months later, the same papers were informing readers of Herr Hitlers attacks on the Jews and Communists.

The press had been full of cricket news, too, all about Don Bradmans battles with that Douglas Jardine fellow and how the Englishman Harold Larwood was bowling what they called Bodyline. To Frances, all that was a waste of paper and ink. She just wanted news of her son.

Somehow, somewhere, in some way she prayed her boy for he was still her boy even though he was now forty was still alive and finding his way back home.

She reminded herself that Bert was smart enough to do anything. As a boy hed never even seen an aeroplane when he took her ironing board and some junk hed scrounged and built his own flying machine, soaring high above the beautiful blue surf of Mon Repos beach. He broke world flying records while most of Bundaberg, including the rest of her family, still travelled by horse and buggy. Then he flew halfway round the world twice with no co-pilot, no radio, no navigator, no financial backing just a compass, a page from an atlas perched on his lap and a pocket torch in case he had to land in the dark.

Frances had known exactly what her boy could do since the days shed towed his first flying machine behind her buggy through Bundabergs verdant cane fields and watched him experiment with flight until he finally soared like the birds that had inspired him. She knew all about his courage and resourcefulness as a World War I pilot and then as the greatest solo aviator the world had seen. She thought she knew him back to front. But as it would transpire, there was also much about Squadron Leader Herbert John Louis Hinkler AFC, DSM that she didnt know and that he had kept securely hidden from the rest of the world. He was a man full of secrets.

Berts life had been a marriage of courage and enterprise but, as Frances would soon learn, not only did he have a wife in England, he also had a wife in the USA. When he left Heath Row just after three oclock on that winters morning of 7 January 1933, with the runway illuminated by the headlights of a friends Rolls-Royce, his whole life was swathed in shadows.

In the midst of the Great Depression, Bert was a sad and weary man. His clandestine life was beginning to unravel, the world around him spiralling out of control like the planes hed shot down in aerial warfare. Forty, childless and with a heavy heart, he had seen the stock markets collapse and his brilliant inventions and business ideas wither. There were rumours that Mussolini was planning to invade Ethiopia, and who knew what Hitler had planned for Germany?

Ahead of Bert was his most daring journey yet: 32,000 kilometres first from London to Australia and then on to Canada a journey he believed would set the world of flight on its head yet again. To sustain him he carried six sandwiches one egg, two cheese and three made from tongue. He had three Thermos flasks of sugarless black coffee, another Thermos of water and four bottles of stout. Inside his breast pocket he carried a love letter from one of the two women who claimed to be his wife and ten small photos of a young woman standing next to an aeroplane.

But as Bert said farewell to his three-legged cat and his cottage in the woods near Southampton and set off on that dark morning to conquer the world yet again, he believed his great odyssey could change his life. Like the Phoenix, he would rise once more, sort out his tangled love life and again be hailed as the man who revolutionised air transport. He had written the first chapter of his autobiography with the promise to his publishers of more thrilling instalments. He said his goodbyes to the two friends who met him at the aerodrome, and then flew for six hours and fifty-five minutes before marking his log as he saw the River Arno wind its way through the glorious undulations of the Tuscan hills he knew well. Then he headed towards Florence and the Pratomagno mountains nearby.

Bert wasnt worried by the spiteful weather. His faithful Puss Moth with its tiny, trusty engine had once carried him down the Atlantic coasts of North and South America and across the South Atlantic to Africa through vicious gales. At times on that epic journey, with only a little pet monkey to keep him company, he had flown just 1.5 metres above huge rolling ocean waves to dodge thunderstorms. He believed his plane could survive any raging fury these mountains hurled at him.