Notice is hereby given that the HCSA Annual General Meeting will be held on Wednesday 4 October 2023, 5.30pm at the Historian Hotel, Coromandel Place, Adelaide, for a 6.00pm start.

Please make sure you membership is up to date beforehand, which can be done here.

Please book at Eventbrite following this link.

If you wish to nominate for a position, please fill out the form here prior to the night.

Food and drinks will be available for purchase at the downstairs bar.

All are welcome.

The night will feature a talk by Lainie Anderson: ‘The Greatest Air Race’.

Abstract

Sir Ross Smith’s 1919 flight from London to Darwin is one of the pioneering feats of Australian history. It was achieved as part of the 1919 Great Air Race, at a time when open-cockpit planes were made of wood, wire and fabric, and there were basically no airfields after India. Now likened to man landing on the moon, the flight inspired a nation in desperate need of good news after World War One. The ingenuity was awesome: a cracked engine was fixed with chewing gum, and 300 metres of bamboo matting were laid over a muddy makeshift runway. Ross Smith’s crew included his brother and navigator Keith Smith and air mechanics Wally Shiers (SA) and Jim Bennett from Victoria. Their Vickers Vimy aircraft was last year relocated to a new purpose-designed home at Adelaide Airport.

Bio

Lainie Anderson has been a columnist for Adelaide’s Sunday Mail since 2007, with her 35-year journalism and public relations career also including stints at Melbourne’s Herald Sun, London’s The Times and the South Australian Tourism Commission. In 2016 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to gauge the international significance of the 1919 Air Race from England to Australia and the historic Vickers Vimy aircraft housed at Adelaide Airport. Her debut novel, Long Flight Home, was published by Wakefield Press in Australia and Ulverscroft in the UK. Lainie also co-produced a one-hour SBS documentary on the air race, presented by astronaut Andy Thomas. In early 2021 Lainie took on the volunteer role of media advisor for Voluntary Assisted Dying South Australia (VADSA), generating statewide coverage and lobbying politicians to ensure successful passage of the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill. She is currently studying a PhD with UniSA Creative, exploring the life of South Australia’s Kate Cocks who in 1915 became the first policewoman in the British Empire employed with the same salary and arrest powers as men. Lainie is an ambassador with the Hutt Street Centre and sits on the SA Regional Selection Committee of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. Earlier this year she was announced as the 2023 Emerging Historian of the Year by the History Council of South Australia.