Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [11]
After McGinness and Fysh left him in the Gresham Hotel, he immediately fronted Longreach sheep-station owner and grazier Ainslie Templeton with the idea. Templeton agreed to match him pound for pound. That afternoon McMaster set off around the town to raise capital for what would become one of the world’s major airlines.
In Queen Street, bookshop owner John Thompson coughed up £100; in Eagle Street, Queensland Primary Producers Association managing director Alan Campbell provided cash and volunteered to act as company secretary; back in Queen Street, McMaster bumped into Winton shopkeeper T. J. O’Rourke, who took him back to his hotel and immediately signed a cheque for £250 with the promise of another £250 when it was needed. The money was put in McMaster’s personal bank account. ‘Qantas was founded on trust and co-operation, and that is what stuck to it through its first severe years of pioneering life,’ wrote McMaster in his personal papers.5
McGinness and Fysh rushed to Sydney to start the process of acquiring their first aircraft. On 16 November 1920 the certificate of incorporation was given in Brisbane for Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd. It was written as Q.A.N.T.A.S. – drawing on the Anzac legend for its inspiration.
McGinness and Fysh got hold of two planes and two months later undertook that first flight from Sydney that so nearly ended in disaster. They had bought the Avro, but were simply delivering the BE2E to its owner, Longreach stock and station agent Charlie Knight. On the second leg of the flight Knight joined the BE2E, still piloted by Fysh, as a passenger. Fysh again missed his track and this was altogether too much for Knight, who was airsick and swore he would never fly again. He agreed to sell the BE2E to Qantas for 450 pounds.
The two aviators were due to meet their key financial backer, McMaster, at Barcaldine. They picked him up and beat the mail train to Longreach by 20 minutes, despite giving it a two-hour head start. The final leg was to Winton, where the press and public had been primed for the arrival of the two planes. The flight should have taken only one and a half hours, but up in the air McMaster had difficulty telling roads from ploughed fire tracks. ‘We went wrong,’ he said.6
He was a passenger in the Avro, together with company shareholder Templeton. Slowly he realised they were off course and, in the windy open cockpit of the plane, wrote a series of pencil notes to the unflappable McGinness to the effect that they were heading in the wrong direction. ‘One hour from Longreach. Too many mountains on our right,’ he wrote. McGinness was unmoved. ‘He was cool; too cool for Templeton and myself. He kept pointing to his compass, which showed west.’7 Eventually he wrote that Winton is north north-west of Longreach. McGinness finally reacted, adjusted course and they landed in Winton in front of a large crowd after three hours in the air and with just 15 minutes of fuel left in their tanks. ‘Much relieved,’ wrote McMaster in the papers researched by John Gunn. ‘We had a drink.’8
Despite some debate and Longreach taking a larger role in the life of the business, Winton was the official birthplace of Qantas. Harriet Rylie did the secretarial chores free of charge from her stock and station agent father’s offices in Winton; Miss K. Tighe did the bookkeeping for free in the town