THE FLYING CAROLINGEAN BROTHERS

 

The tragic tale of an unsung hero in early Australian aviation.

 

The Flying Carolingean Brothers, Charles, Manny and Karen, invented the idea for the areoplane after witnessing their billy-goat Truffles get skewered by a windmill and two leaves of corrugated iron in the Big Wind of '93. The head, fan and shaft of the said mill became detached in a single ferocious gust, skewered the said goat lengthways, dragging him from where he was tied up and taking the framework of the goat-shed from its moorings such that it formed kite-like wings that enabled the whole ensemble to fly about the farm in the updrafts for an incredible 9 minutes and 42 seconds, a new world record at the time.

 

It was Karen, sitting at the dinner table, who first had the idea. Truffles suddenly flew past the window before ascending in a somersault and looping back over the blackberry hills. "I've got this idea for manned flight," she said. "I figure that if we take Manny and skewer him with a windmill and attach two sides of the goat-shed to his arms and throw him off the roof-top in a blustering gale then he might fly around the farm like a bird, and thus man's age-old dream of flying will be finally realised!"

 

It was Manny who added the innovation of not actually skewering the pilot with a windmill drive-shaft but of creating a small space where he might sit and navigate the craft on its way through the airy yonder. He first tested this innovation on their rooster, Digby, and from this devised the notion of the "cock pit".

 

Charles, an entrepuenurial man, raised funding for the project by  taking bets on whether Manny might be unharmed, injured, maimed or killed outright in this misadventure, eventually taking handsome odds of five-to-one on paraplegia and/or brain damage.

 

They were exciting times. The Von Slender Brothers from blowey Berlin, Carl, Stig and Hilda, had just invented the hydrogen balloon and sailed to Denmark for the long weekend. In France, the Dupont-Draper Brothers, Pierre, Geston and Sweet Marlene, had attempted to jump the English Channel in their miraculous rocket-shoes but instead self-immolated in the bright blue skies over the grassy knobs of Normandy. And meanwhile, in America, there were reports that the Wright Brothers, Orville, Kevin and Dehlila, were locked in a life-and-death struggle with the Wrong Brothers, Neville, Angus and Leanne, over who could first patent an all-American red-white-and-blue flying-machine by which Americans could thereafter claim that they were the first up into the fluffy clouds. It was said that President Filmore himself took a special interest.

 

The Carolingean Brothers were sublimely unperturbed by the competition. What all of them lacked, as Charles did say, was that antipodean ingenuity by which Australians had learned to think upside down. That is, every other contender was from the northern hemisphere where the stuffy old conventions of ancient ways still prevailed. Our heroes, on the other hand, lived just outside of Elegant Ridge where great men breathing the pioneering spirit had looked beyond the upper limits and said a wry "Gedday" to bold tomorrow. It was a known advantage. The district was already rich with great inventors. There was Dicky Cousins, the man who invented the footpath, who lived in a humpy near Restless Pleasure, Cobber McDool, the man who invented the side-gate, from out near the southern twists of the lower Murumbigee, and not forgetting Nigel Pillburn, the man who invented the road-map and never got lost again, who hailed from the forests of curly spiceweed not far from Ivy's Rump. There was also Bluey Aeons, who claimed to have invented Easter Thursday, although there were others who claimed that they had lazed around doing nothing on the day before Good Friday long ahead him.

 

"We come from creative stock," Charles insisted, and he reminded them of the time Manny had road-tested the three-wheeled "Carolingean Burler" in pursuit of the land-speed record and made them a small fortune in winnings by surviving with only a broken leg.

 

It was a sleek design. As usual, Karen did the drawings. The metalwork was knocked together in the back shed and Manny was tanked on whiskey to ensure his heart was willing.

 

"Are you ready Manny?" asked his brothers, perched on top of the Ferguson's Hill.

 

"No!" he said, terrified.

 

So they gave him a hefty heave and off he went three-wheeling in a ball of dust down the steep incline. He managed to dodge the pot-holes and took the bend with ease but eventually came a cropper in old man Ferguson's pig trough having attained the blistering velocity of thirty-nine and one eighth miles per hour in the moments just before he collected the barbed-wire fence. The crowd who had gathered rushed to see if he was alright. A medical team pushed their way through. "A broken leg!" they announced, and those who had wagered on a mortal outcome cursed and crumpled up their tickets.

 

Charles felt they had a better chance with manned flight. Manny only weighed slightly more than a dead goat, and they could starve him for a week beforehand to calibrate the difference. There was also the prospect that Manny would have better survival instincts than a dead goat and so might manage to steer clear of obstacles as they came his way. The "cock-pit" innovation was also a winner. If a panicking rooster in boilermaker goggles could grip upon the flight controls and look out from the pilot seat, there was a good chance that Manny could do so as well.

 

Karen explained the design to Fedway MacNeal from the Elegant Ridge Daily. Heather explained the design to "The secret, " she said, "is in the drive-shaft. It turns the propeller which churns up the air as Manny sits in the cock-pit and pedals like hell."

 

"So you've adapted aspects of the old three-wheeler to the task at hand?" asked Fedway, writing it all down.

 

"Of course," said Karen. "We cleaned off the pig muck - or most of it - and have attached it with a couple of big screws borrowed from the tractor."

 

Such resourcefulness! This was the mark of the Australian aviator. While the Wright Brothers, or the Wrong Brothers, might send out to a foundry and have their components made by order, the Carolingean Brothers would just make do. Karen pointed out how the tail-flap was held in place with an array of multi-coloured hay-band.

 

"And what about the pilot?" asked the reporter.

 

"Oh, he's doing well," said Karen. "He's at 20 to 1 at the moment."

 

"Is that for death or injury?"

 

"Death."

 

"So punters can still look to decent odds, then?"

 

"Definitely. We don't think he will be so lucky as to walk away with just a broken leg this time, but we're confident he can survive. Provided he lands in the paddock and misses the rocky out-crop."

 

"And what are the chances of that?"

 

"About seven to one, but everything depends upon the windy updrafts."

 

"Will he be wearing any protective head-gear?"

 

"Good heavens no. That wouldn't be fair on the punters. We want nature to take its course."

 

The reporter looked around.

 

"And where's the pilot now? Can we speak to him?"

 

"I'm afraid not," said Karen. "He's recently found religion. He's off doing his hail Marys and confessing his sins to Father Connor."

 

This last point made unexpected but dramatic news. The next morning the Daily ran a front-page with the massive head-line, "AVAITORS SEEK DIVINE HELP TO CHEAT PUNTERS!" with a long, in-depth interview with Teddy Morris the biggest better in Bixley Downs.

 

"I've got three hundred quid on this," he explained. "If I'd known they'd be invoking the protection of the Almighty I might have thought twice about risking my money."

 

Other punters agreed. There was some substantial bets on Manny being splattered like a mosquitoe or being dismembered in the wreckage. Most felt that it was just plain cheating for him to suddenly find God and start praying for supernatural assistance. It was as if he had suddenly decided to wear a padded jacket, someone said, or be fitted with a parachute. "It's un-Australian!" said some. There was a stream of people wanting their money back.

 

It was up to Charles to allay their fears and point out that it was, after all, only the Catholic God to which Manny had been praying and that since Martin Luther nailed his 93 theses on the door at chilly Gutenberg and challenged out-moded medieval episcopal oppression, sensible betting men had nothing to fear from papist hocus pocus. He advised the disgruntled to pick up their King James and call upon the true God to look after their betting interests. Indeed, all the Catholic clap-trap is probably counter-productive, he said. The good Lord would most likely take offense at Manny's paganish ways and Trinitarian superstitions and smite him down with a thunderbolt from on High before he'd even flown half a mile unaided.

 

Eventually, this satisfied the local theologians, the bets were set and Tornado Lane - a weatherman of renown - picked a windy, grey September Sunday for the daring day.

 

The nation's greatest inventors were invited to attend along with the Minister for Progress and Big Ideas. The guest of honour was Grover Flushnut, the man who fitted an escape value to the septic tank, who was accompanied by Filbert Cody, the brilliant cactus pioneer. Flick Nickles, the man who combined the combine harvester, arrived along with Homer Segway-Lipton, the man who invented the tea-pot and Bill McGill, the man who colourized the rubber band, all the way from Adelaide.  Phil Noodles, known throughout the colonies as the man who put wheels on the wheel-barrow, Professor August Licklink-Jolly, the man who discovered sugar cubes and the famous Hudson Marrow, the man who revolutionized the pineapple, all arrived together. Later in the morning Colin Waters, the man who accidentally invented the domestic garden hose one intense summer's afternoon, arrived wearing his Prince Albert Medal for Clever Colonials.

 

These illustrious VIPs assembled along with most of the people of the district. There were scones and lamingtons. A small Catholic contingent sat getting drunk and making pious novinas off to one side. Karen showed off the vehicle to the dignatories as they arrived and Charles mingled among the crowd offering long odds on four broken ribs. Manny was philosophical and discoursed on how man was a lonesome bi-ped who was never made to fly.

 

It was just then a telegraph arrived reporting that the Wright Brothers, in their fancy-winged "Kitty-hawk", had launched themselves skyward and were claiming a marvellous event. Twenty minutes later, however, another telegraph arrived, this time from the Wrong Brothers, claiming that the former telegraph should not be believed, that Orville Wright was a big sissy and that, in any case, "Kitty-hawk" was a silly name for a flying contraption compared to their own machine called "The Vulture" which would soon carry them aloft to claim the all-American honours. "Send them all a telegraph," said Karen, historically, "and tell them that today the "Truffles II" will traverse the airy ways at the dawn of a glossy new era!" News wires ran hot. Even the London Times sported a little feature on what they all were calling the "Birdman of Elegant Ridge".

 

It was indeed a perfect day. The sun was sunny, the clouds were cloudy and the wind was windy. Nevertheless it wasn't until about three in the afternoon before the wind finally got up the nerve to blow in the right direction. When it did, Manny was gang-tackled as he left the outhouse, was dragged kicking and screaming to the cock-pit, strapped in and Archbishop McCrae administered supreme unction. Karen made the final adjustments to the corrugated fins that, in theory, would guide the craft through the blustering currents like a tireme of lost Odysseus battling the wine-dark sea. Back on that fateful day Karen had observed how Truffles involuntarily caroozed across the trailing down-drafts and with a simple gravitational shift of his dead weight scooped the craft up from below, looping back into the sky and just avoiding the wheat silo. It was like a ballet. Accordingly, she advised Manny to lean to the left or the right if he wanted to change direction. There was also the cunning flap. She pointed. "Don't forget the cunning flap!" she said as the wind picked up again. It was attached to the nose-gear and held in place with some wire purloined from the gate on the sheep dip. "What?" yelled Manny, petrified. "The cunning flap!" yelled Karen. At last he understood. He had endured no less than twenty hours of training and, generously, his brothers had ensured full well intimate knowledge of his craft. All he had to do was pedal on what was left of the three-wheeler and then let physics do the rest.

 

The wind banked up again as the vehicle perched precarious on the rooftop.

 

"Are you ready Manny?" they asked.

 

"No!" he said, terrified, blubbering that St Christopher might guide him to a gentle fate.

 

Suddenly, the iron bottom creaked, pillows of air lodged beneath the rusty wings and with a push the whole device was airborne. The crowds below looked on amazed. Manny started peddling, the propeller started to propel and - historical ovations! - a man was freely sailing on the air as casually as a yatchsman on a big lagoon. Rather than just plummeting to a certain demise Manny's craft lifted up from the earth, defied gravity as if it was a stupid idea, and sailed out over the blackberry patch in mysterious levitations. Peering through his goggles, Manny had the vision splendid.

 

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" said the archbishop.

 

"The cunning flap!" yelled Karen one more time, just before Manny's craft sailed beyond ear-shot and started climbing still further into the lofty cobalt.

 

Charles declared that all bets were sealed and that the wager had begun.

 

Medical teams carrying stretchers bolted into the paddocks left and right trying to predict where Manny might crash.

 

Punters looked at their clocks. Some good money was saying he couldn't stay up for more than two minutes, even if he did manage to survive coming down.

 

For his part, Manny floated into a cool reverie of almost ornithological proportions. He felt like a wedge-tail eagle hovering nestwards in the crisp breezes of spring. He felt like the argle-beaked blue heron swooping across the verdant overlays of fertile ploughlands searching for the morning worm. He felt like the web-footed western splicer circling over dry river-beds where hillocks of brown sticks disguise their eggs from the sunshine. He felt like the green Boswell parrokeet showing off to a nice looking she-hen in the frisky flush of the new dawn. "I'm a bird!" he cried, moving suddenly from fear to elation. He sailed past the massive pine and just missed the juniper before twisting in a gully of windy vibrations and sailing northward into the light. The sky seemed to shake all around him. The earth was spinning below.

 

The Truffles II held together with remarkable constancy. The iron sheets held their own against the rattling velocity and the propeller propelled. The bits of string holding the tail-gear in place stretched under the strain but the whole thing kept its shape in spite of exceptional forces. At one point it gave off a sickening noise and went into a nose dive directly towards the rocky out-crop, but all of a sudden it straightened, one of the wheels fell off, and it curved gracefully sideways over the barley fields picking up speed in the tail wind and doing double circles a hundred feet above the dairy.

 

"Let's see the Wright Brothers do that!" said Karen, impressed.

 

Flick Nickles took a measurement.

 

"Ave Maria!" said the archbishop.

 

Gaining in confidence, Manny said good afternoon to a flock of pink galas that happened to be cruising along in his air-space. Then, recalling his training, he shifted his weight to one side and carried his flying machine down the valley yelling "Coooooo-Weeee!" as he went. He flew over the creek, high above the lambing packs, down past the back road to Yarrawonga, out into the wide brown paddocks of old Mr Roger's, across the bald hump of red soil where Bill Singles shears his sheep and then back towards the gathered crowd staring breathless as history glided silently above them. Manny peddled like a mad thing as layers of insects gummed up his goggles and a dank storm cloud rolled over unnoticed in the distance. It was then, though, that the wind suddenly dropped and the Truffles II lost most of its momentum.

 

"Oh my God, he's gonna hit the tractor shed!" someone cried.

 

But instead of hitting the tractor shed Manny - remembering the cunning flap - steered his vehicle between the buildings, swooping down to be perilously near to the ground, and tunnelling through the clothes-line collecting Charles's bright red long-johns on the way. The said under-garment was suddenly wrapped around the pilot's head like an ill-fitting turban, obscuring his vision and tangling up his controls. He took an unscheduled turn through the chook-yard, temporarily reinstalling Digby in the cockpit, before ascending stratospherically and disappearing over the hill.

 

The assembled aviation enthusiasts fell silent. They looked at each other in trepedation, waiting for some sign or sound. Some expected the machine to re-emerge and swoop back around past the hill and into view once more, but others quickly bet a fiver that it wouldn't.

 

And it didn't. Instead, there was an almighty crack of broken red gum branches, squalls of dust, squawks of interupted ducklings, then a hellish mangle of tin and steel and canvas as the aviator collided with the earth in old man Roger's bull paddock, just narrowly avoiding another episode in a murky water trough.

 

The crowd ran to see. When they reached the top of the hill the craft had already stopped in a definite manner and was strewn into a loose-fitting disarray among the bull-dust and tufts of green phalaris. It was suddenly unrecognizeable. It was as if a windmill designed by Picasso had dropped out of heaven and landed wrong way up. Amazingly, though, from in amongst the wreckage crawled the intrepid Carolingean, shaken, clad in Charles's longuns, but otherwise intact.

 

"I'm alright!" he yelled, waving. "I'm alright!"

 

The crowd was non-plussed. Was it possible? Could a man emerge from such a calamity unscathed?

 

"Damn!" said Teddy Morris, suddenly a ruined man.

 

"Damn!" echoed all the other punters, profoundly disappointed.

 

The bookmakers were stunned.

 

"I don't believe it!" said Charles, amazed.

 

Fedway MacNeal and his photographer raced ahead to get the scoop. He could already see the headline MIRACLE LANDING! forming in the newsprint of his mind.

 

Phil Noodles had plans to add wheels to it and Bill McGill wanted to paint it yellow.

 

Karen was gob-smacked. In her heart of hearts she was expecting spinal injuries, reducing Manny to a drooling vegetable, at least.

 

Manny couldn't believe it himself. "Yes! Yes!" he yelled again, jumping up and down, and waving the bright red long-johns to the crowd. "I'm alive! I'm alright! Whoo, hoo!"

 

"Praise the Lord," said the archbishop. And he made the sign of the cross. At this the Catholic contingent fell to their knees in unison, chanted in Latin and counted it a decisive victory against the Protestant schismatics.

 

Their prayers, however, reached the pearly gates prematurely. Events suddenly went into slow motion at this point as the crowd looked on in horror. There was Manny, deliriously alive, waving Charles' underwear about in relief and unexpected joy. But immediately behind him was old man Roger's bull - Gavin - two tonnes of pure, nasty ugliness, his massive testicals slopping side to side as he charged in brainless anger like a steam-train down a precipitous incline. He took a great dislike to foreign objects in his paddock - especially ones waving red long johns. His forehead was all squashed in from ramming corner-posts just for fun. His tail was matted in packets of hair and manure that housed whole colonies of blow-flies. When he was deprived of cows to mount he spent most of his time belting his face into the ground and snorting at imaginary rivals in psychopathic rage. Suddenly, in a terrible instant, he collected the brave aviator, skewed him - like a goat skewed by a wind-mill drive shaft - and roared around the paddock at sixty miles an hour, bucking and frothing and tossing Manny around like a rag doll in goggles.

 

The crowd went, "Ooooooo!"

 

Someone ran to get old man Rogers, the only man who could pacify the beast. But it was too late. In a four year career Gavin had already claimed three farm hands, two jackaroos, a shearer, a swagman and a visitor from Poland taking a short-cut on a foggy night. And now a hapless aviation pioneer. All who watched on knew it instantly. The bull ran through Manny like a freight car busting with the fat of the land. Splat! The poor pilot never knew what hit him.

 

"I can't watch," said Karen, watching.

 

"That's gotta hurt," said Dicky Cousins, wincing.

 

A dispute broke out almost straight away as to whether punters could claim on the fatality which - although not a direct outcome of the flight - was nevertheless connected. Charles argued that the wager ended when Truffles II came thumping to the ground, while others argued that the bet didn't end until Manny was back home safe and sound, the flight and post-flight eventualities being co-terminus.

 

The archbishop recited the twenty third psalm from St Jerome - Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death - and strolled back down the hill for a stiff drink.

 

Fedway and his photographer had stopped aghast at the fence-line and had just managed to snap a picture of the happy hero three seconds prior to being bulldozed by Gavin's living fury. He looked strangely serene. Having just then conquered the skies and sublimely ignorant of his impending fate the victorious grin across his wind-swept face was like an allegory of the entire human condition - soaring like a bird, splattered like a cow turd, and supremely uncomprehending through it all.

 

A few minutes later the storm rolled in and unleashed a torrent of cold rain, sogging up the lamingtons and sending all the dignatories back into town for a hot dinner. It was there that the theological implications of the afternoon were debated. Those expecting that Manny might be struck down by lightning mid-flight for his papist predelections were not surprised, and some saw an allusion to Mithraism and pagan roots. Others said he was taken by the devil for defying the laws of the sky. The visiting clairvoyant, Maple De Chunkachenko, quickly whipped out her ouija board and reported that Manny - and Truffles - were safe and well in purgatory while God decided what to do with ill-fated aviators struck down in their prime. It was all a new advent after all. The stiff horzons were being challenged every day. Soon dozens of hare-brained individuals would be meeting their deaths in the scramble to be first aloft in the great new era of flight.

 

In this particular case, thus it was that the Flying Carolingean Brothers, Charles, Manny and Karen, grasped hold of that blustering September day and sent a man soaring through the sky long before either the Wright or the Wrong Brothers, even though this has gone unrecognized in the annals even now. Sadly, the majestic feat was lost in the subsequent drama that involved a violent dispute over many substantial wagers and old man Roger's claim that the flight of Truffles II had constituted trespass leaving Gavin in his rights to maul the rude intruder. It finally went to the Supreme Court of Victoria where Chief Justice Lilly ruled simple misadventure and awarded costs against Karen because she had hung the long-johns on the line. It has consequently not been well recorded that Manny of the Goggles stayed up for a stunning twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds and by conservative calculations traversed some seven miles in a make-shift contraption with a cock-pit and a cunning flap, an aviator of distinction.

 

Charles later invented the Saturn V rocket but without Manny to strap to its underside his genius went unproven. Karen later invented the plain white long johns and successfully demonstrated their benign effect upon completely unhinged bulls. Meanwhile, Flick Nickles, the man who combined the combine harvester, came up with a brand new combination, Hudson Marrow added the over-head sprayer and Grover Flushnut, realising the potential, had another great idea. The inventors of the district were inspired. It was nearly some twenty years later, however, before the townsfolk mounted a plaque in honour of Manny, propping it aloft the elegant ridge itself, pointing out into the wide blue yonder, and saying simply that he flew like the birds before the Americans even had a chance.

 

As a matter of controversy Karen had sent a telegram to Orville Wright the day after Manny's funeral but Orville claimed he never got it. Strangely, though, he demonstrated rare prescience and appropriated all the features of the Truffles II and with his brothers flew off into historical ovations as if the Wrong Brothers never existed. It seems likely - but now impossible to prove - that Orville and his siblings beefed up their dreary little "Kitty-Hawk" with antipodean designs and took it to the patent office with no mention of the Flying Carolingeans and their magnificent feats of inland derring do, yet another case of plagaristic injustice that so often besets the forgotten sons of the southern land. 

 

- O. Spaniel Murray