... Or, "Why I learnt to value a wide angled lens in the 11 years since I shot this."

There was a complacency bordering on arrogance in the global outlook of Australia in the 1920s. Britain and her empire had seen off Fritz in the first world war (albeit at the cost of a huge swathe of an entire generation) and it was assumed that the Royal Navy would continue to rule the waves to keep Australia safe and supplied with manufactured goods from the Mother Country.

Then the 1930s happened. Our WWI ally Japan started getting quite uppity. And a certain former corporal started getting himself huge promotions in central Europe. Thankfully there were some people who foresaw the threat to Australian supply lines, like Essington Lewis (1881-1961), the general manager of mining (and at the time, steel production) company BHP. He successfully lobbied for the creation of Australian munitions plants, an importantly, the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) to design and build Australian military aircraft. (Note: Despite its name, this was not a government entity but rather a private enterprise. It was a joint venture between BHP, car maker General Motors-Holden, Broken Hill Associated Smelter, Imperial Chemical Industries, the Orient Steam Navigation Company and the Electrolytic Zinc Company. A government run business, Government Aircraft Factories, would be founded in July 1939 to build aircraft under licence.)

Shortly after its foundation, CAC acquired Sydney (Mascot) based Tugan Aircraft acquiring along with it retired veteran RAAF pilot and current engineer Lawrence Wackett (1896-1982) who became the general manager.

In 1938 the RAAF put out a requirement for a two seater, tail wheel fitted training aircraft for novice pilots. The initial design, the CA-2 Wackett (you can guess where the name came from) flew on 19 September 1939. It would not be until 1940 that the RAAF committed to the design, which by then carried various engine and propeller upgrades and came into service in March 1941 as the CA6 Wackett... the type you see here.

In service this was A3-31. After its sale by the RAAF it became VH-AIY (part of the registration can be seen here). It was the private aircraft of Horrie Miller (1893-1980), one of the founders of MacRobertson Miller Airlines (1927-1993), based in Western Australia. (MMA was bought out by Ansett in the 1960s.)

The Wackett was 7.92m (26') long with a wingspan of 11.28m (37'), a gross weight of 1,175kg and was powered by a Warner Scarab 7 cylinder radial engine producing 130kW for a maximum speed of 100 knots (185 hm/h), and a range of 684km.

Addendum: My personal opinion is that Facebook is a sociopathic organisation that steals other peoples' intellectual property (including the images in this gallery) despite being explicitly denied permission to do so.