Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Mary Garden, New Holland, $29.99.
We expect our heroes to be exemplary, but they seldom are. Oscar Garden was a New Zealand aviator and horticulturist. On 16 October 1930, he embarked on a flight from an aerodrome in London, England, to Wyndham Aerodrome in Western Australia.
What was unbelievable was as he taxied his tiny Gipsy Moth across London’s Croydon aerodrome no one was expecting him to arrive in Australia. It was sheer madness as he only had a mere 39 flying hours under his belt. When 18 days later he landed at Wyndham everyone was surprised. The world’s imagination was captured: his flight was the third fastest after veteran aviators Bert Hinkler and Charles Kingsford Smith.
There was a lack of fanfare, yet he had accomplished the most formidable feat in aerial navigation. The press dubbed him ‘Sundowner of the Skies’. Unlike most of his contemporaries who died in crashes, Oscar survived and went on to a career in commercial aviation. He ended up as Chief Pilot of Tasman Empire Airways, the forerunner of Air New Zealand, but left suddenly in 1947. He never flew a plane again.
His daughter and author, Mary, rightly claims his achievements were noteworthy and, he deserves to be remembered. In what is her journey of discovery, she knew little about her father’s life as an aviator, until recently. As well as digging up his ‘amazing flying adventures, she uncovers his tumultuous childhood in north Scotland, the ghosts of his past, which he could not escape, and shines a light on the intergenerational trauma that impacted her own life’.
The title refers to Garden’s modest persona and habit of turning up unannounced, like the itinerant “sundowner” swagmen of Australian folklore.
Mary writes well and candidly of her father, Oscar Garden, a hero from the golden age of aviation.
