Here’s the text of a talk that I gave at the open day of the Airways Museum which focused, this year, on the Empire Air Mail Scheme.  This talk of mine is based on a paper about differing ideas about the concept of ‘Empire’ between Britain and Australia in the 1930s that I should put … More Origins of the Empire Air Main Scheme

The fourth Aviation Cultures meeting took place at Sydney University this past week.  Around 100 people attended and had a fine time with many interesting presenters on a wide range of topics related to aviation studies.  I made a contribution too, a short paper on the history of Australian civil aviation in the 20th Century … More A History of Australian Civil Aviation

Yesterday I went to Booktown Clunes which is a huge orgy of book selling and buying. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s worth finding out about on the www. Despite the manifest temptations I bought only three books, and worthy tomes they are too, none of your paperback rubbish. My main reason for going … More BEFORE/NOW

As part of the history of Australian sf fandom that I’m working on I have been publishing a small fanzine called iOTA containing reports on the progress of the project, some general thoughts on fandom past and present, reviews of old fanzines and reprints of various items previously published in Australian fanzines. I put this … More iOTA – issues 01 to 16

Published just now is an article of mine titled ‘Sudden Turbulence in the 1970s, Australian Air Transport and the Whitlam Government’.  It is a draft of the first chapter of the third volume of my history of Australian civil aviation in the 20th century.

Aussie Fans is the title of an academic tome about fandoms in Australia, mostly contemporary analysis.  The opening chapter is a historical discussion of science fiction fandom in Australia before the mid 1960s that I wrote.  The University of Iowa Press published the book at the end of last year.  

I got back from the Heritage of the Air conference in Canberra a few days ago but have been trying to catch up since then. It was an event sponsored by ICOMOS so there was a lot of heritage discussion as well as aviation, which I found interesting, and a good time was had by … More Heritage of the Air in Canberra

David Grigg and Perry Middlemiss do a fine podcast called Two Chairmen Talking which is about what they’ve been reading and watching recently, mostly science fiction or stuff related to it.  Back in Episode 5 there is about half an hour of me being interviewed about history and the history of Australian sf fandom I’ll … More Talking about history and a history of Australian fandom