In 1942, Japanese captured Singapore and cut off the air link in between Australia and England. By 1943, Royal Australian Air force started one of the historically important flights in between Perth and Koggala (south of Sri Lanka), Consolidated PBY Catalina under the banner of Qantas , which was a distance of 6,480km, took record breaking time airborne, around 28hours. It was to be flying for more than 24 hours allowing seeing sunrise twice. Especially, it was timed to pass Japanese held territory in dark. One of these flights still considered longest airborne commercial flights in history that took 32 hours and 9 minutes. Interesting part is navigation technology was not that developed at the time and pilots were to navigate using basic compass and stars. For the passengers who completed this flight were awarded a certificate called Secret order of Double Sunrise. One remarkable fact is this flight never crashed, in spite of its extreme measure.
Certificate awarded to passengers of double sunrise flight;
This flight was later changed to a Consolidated Liberator that flew from Learmonth (near Exmouth) to Colombo, reducing flying time to 17 hours with better fuel consumption allowing more cargo. This was the first time; Qantas flew with its new famous logo we see today. *
Other story is rather amusing.
Gerd von Dincklage-Schulenburg was one of the pioneered diver and a spearfisherman, with German origin, lived in Sri Lanka. In 1955, he moved to Australia hoping to carry on with his passionate lifestyle with ocean.
Once Dincklage was drinking beer in Quokka Arms Hotel in Rottnest Island with his friend, Hugh Schmitt who was a journalist. When Dincklage was spending freely, Schmitt reminded that he needs to keep money for return trip to main land which is 19.7 km away. “Beer-influenced” Dincklage boasted that “in that case, I would swim back”. Rest was history! He didn’t limit his boasting to boozing time. He really made a solo swim from Fremantle to Rottnest in shark infested rough seas making the first ever-recorded swim through Rottnest channel.
Gerd, enjoying after completing the swim;
That gave the birth to one of the highly regarded annual ocean swims in Australia, Rottnest Channel Swim organized by Rottnest Channel Swim Association. Not to say, Gerd von Dincklage-Schulenburg embraced thousands of swimmers to follow his spirit of challenging the endurance.
Dincklage lived in Perth, got married and had three children. Later on, he moved back to Germany. In 2014, he returned to Perth as a guest of the Rottnest swim organizers.
In some point, he mentioned, “The Rottnest swim was probably the longest I ever did, But I have probably been in the water for longer, particularly when I was spearfishing in Sri Lanka” **
* Details of this historic flight was first learned from a talk given by underwater explorer Dharshana Jayawardena at Sub Aqua Club of Sri Lanka.
** I first learned about Gerd von Dincklage-Schulenburg through an article authored by Rex I de Silva on Diving history of Sri Lanka.
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