BTM ANNUAL DINNER
News
Speaker Tracey Curtis-Taylor (Gareth Tarr).
C
elebrated aviator Tracey Curtis-Taylor (the self-styled ‘Bird in a Biplane’) returned
to Brooklands in November to give a speech at the Brooklands Trust Members’ Annual Dinner. This time Tracey brought us up to date with her activities, recalling her latest adventure, a 13,000- mile flight from the UK to Australia, re-enacting Amy Johnson’s famous journey of 1930. The five feet, three inches tall Amy Johnson was quite unlike young ladies of her period. Born to a middle-class family in Hull she attended university and had the ambition to become a commercial airline pilot – unheard of in those days and rare even today. The bold 26-year-old Amy had only 100 hours’ flying time when she started her journey to Australia. It was said the flight was a reaction to the end of a six-year love affair and although the journey was dangerous she felt she had nothing to lose. Indeed, she nearly killed herself four times on the trip – closely missing mountains between Syria and Iraq, running out of fuel in northern India, crash-landing in heavy rain in Rangoon and landing on a sports field that was too short. Amy hoped to beat the world record for the flight but in the event the 19 days she took was too long. Nevertheless, when she finally reached Darwin there was a crowd of 100,000 to meet her. Although Amy had no radio and communica-
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Amy Johnson’s statue in Hull (Gareth Tarr).
tions were limited, wherever she landed she was met by a man in a pith helmet – yes, the British Empire was still largely intact. Not so today of course and one of the challenges Tracey faced was bureaucracy, which is highlighted by the fact it took three months to get to Sydney. Indeed her support team’s aircraft was held up in Indonesia for two months, Tracey flying on ahead of them. Australia was the best part of the trip, which Tracey described as like going back to the 1930s – landing on strips, flying over Ayres Rock and aboriginal tribes. One memorable moment was being visited by a girls’ school in Pakistan where Tracey’s flight was the subject of a school project. One of the girls wrote of Tracey, ‘She forced all her fears into a paper aeroplane and flew away forever’.
The dinner was attended by around 130 members and their guests although unfortunately our President Sir Stirling Moss was unable to be present due to illness. An auction raised over £700 for BTM funds and once again Chris Bass entertained on the piano during pre-dinner drinks. As in previous years the 3-D menus were designed by the inventive Michael Sands and this time the model was of the Test Hill. The observant will have noticed that the car on it was travelling in a downwards direction, not something we normally see today. When Brooklands was built
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