From my image archive - Ansett flying boat at Rose Bay #images #airliners

Short Sandringham Rose Bay_005a
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

In cleaning up some old files I dug up some shots of the old Ansett flying boat base at Rose Bay, Sydney. Yes folks, this was the way to fly if you wanted to cross oceans in relative safety back in the 1930s and '40s. (But this was 1974!!) These big old Short Sandringham 'boats (and others like them) plied their trade on international routes for airlines such as QANTAS for decades before succumbing to their lighter and faster 'wheeled' competitors. Because Lord Howe Island had no runway until the mid 1970s two of these 'boats maintained an essential service to the island before being sold off to Maureen O'Hara and her husband...

BTW, I may not have taken this particular shot - I took a lot, but so did my late friend James Davidson, who had access to the Rose Bay base via his flight engineer father. James got me hooked onto black and white photography in the first place, and probably scared me out of riding motorcycles forever.