Aviation

After Wilbur and Orville Wright’s famous flight of 1903 the race was on around the world to take transport to the sky. In Australia, a sum of £5000  was offered by the Aerial League to anyone who could come up with the first Australian flying machine, and from then on newspapers regularly featured the exploits of those who paved the way for this new industry. One of these ‘magnificent men in their flying machines’ was Horrie Miller who went on to establish the world’s longest aerial taxi service, linking remote and often inaccessible mines and stations of the North West of WA to the City of Perth. MacRobertson Miller Airlines – MMA as the company was known, continued from strength to strength, laying the foundation for a thriving aviation industry in Western Australia. This in turn created a whole new area of training.

Midland Technical School commenced Aviation Training for Aircraft Maintenance apprentices in 1957, taking over from Perth Technical College, where the course had been managed from since the late 1940s. The main aircraft trade lecturer of this period was David John who has been recognised as the father of aviation training in WA.

Training was conducted at an annex at the Perth Airport in Redcliffe and the main client was MMA. Apprentices attended classes one day per week for the first year and half a day per week for the second, third, fourth and fifth year of their apprenticeships. The emphasis of the training was to learn the specific systems of the aircraft operated by MMA, so the apprentices worked on the De Havilland Dove (DH104), the Pratt & Whitney R1830 and the De Havilland Gypsy Queen engines.

The company’s most advanced plane at the time was the DC-3 which had sleek lines, twin Pratt & Whitney engines, a capacity for 21 passengers and a gross weight of 10 896 kilograms. The DC-3 brought a new focus on Engineering and Instrument Techniques to professional training. Thousands of these aircraft were built by the Douglas Aircraft Company or under licence in countries throughout the world. Some are still flying today.

When they were first utilised as passenger aircraft they were referred to as the DST - the Douglas Sleeper Transport. The concept of night travel was being promoted, with sleeper-type accommodation as the marketing strategy.

As well as providing a more efficient passenger service, the DC-3 played an important role in the transportation of beef from the Kimberley stations during the 1950s. The beef was slaughtered at the Wyndham abattoir and flown to Derby where it was loaded onto costal ships for sea transport to Perth and other destinations.

By the mid-fifties, MMA made the decision to purchase the then revolutionary jet plane – the Fokker Friendship F-27. There was only one other F-27 registered in Australia when MMA took delivery of the aircraft it referred to as "the Swan", the first of a series named after Western Australian rivers.

With confidence in the State’s Aviation industry at its peak by the mid-sixties, Midland Technical School responded by introducing full time and part time theory subjects for Pilot Training.

However although the F-27 was very popular, the company could not sustain the level of operations required for the jet age. In 1968 Ansett took control. This resulted in a massive restructure, which caused the loss of more than 300 jobs. However, at the same time the growth in the mining industry meant an increasing number of smaller planes were being required for general aviation. The mineral boom centred mainly on the development of the iron ore fields in the Pilbara, which were said to be discovered when the magnetic compass of mining magnate, Lang Hancock’s plane was affected by the magnetic field of the iron ore.

Since then many of Midland’s graduates from the sixties and seventies have become managers or chief engineers of companies that were created mainly to service the mining industry.  Some like Glen Caple, Chief Engineer of the Royal Aeroclub are involved in aviation training.

Graduates from the Midland Technical School have also been inducted into the Australian Defence Forces, including the Army and Naval Air Wing as well as the Airforce.