Canadian based British adventurer Tracey Curtis-Taylor touches down in Darwin following a 20 day solo flight paying homage to aviation pioneer Amy Johnson’s famous flight from England to Australia in 1930.
DARWIN, AUSTRALIA (RECENT) (AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION) – Canadian based British adventurer Tracey Curtis-Taylor touched down in Darwin on Friday (January 1) following a 20 day solo flight in a bi-plane from England.
Curtis-Taylor’s trip paid homage to aviation pioneer Amy Johnson’s famous flight in 1930, who became the first female pilot to fly solo from England to Australia.
Leaving England on the 1st of October and flying a Boeing 1942 Stearman some 13,000 miles, Curtis-Taylor flew across 23 countries, enjoying spectacular views of the Arabian Desert and the mountains of Myanmar, local media reported.
“Being able to fly an airplane like this at low level half way round the world, you know, in some of the most epic terrain on the planet has been beyond anything,” Curtis-Taylor said of her journey.
Speaking to local media on her arrival in Darwin, where Johnson first touched down all those years ago, Curtis-Taylor was quick to pay tribute to her predecessor.
“My flight is very much a tribute to her [Amy Johnson]. So it is, yeah, celebrating what the pioneers achieved and what women achieve now in aviation as well,” she said.
Johnson died in 1941, aged 37, after her plane crashed into the near-freezing waters of the Thames Estuary in England.
Local media reported that most of the planes technology dated back to the 1920’s, with a simple stick and rudder for controls and an open cockpit exposing Curtis-Taylor to the elements.
“So as you can see it’s fairly devastating on the skin and the hair and so forth, so it’s tiring, its really tiring – the noise, the vibrations, the exposure,” Curtis-Taylor added of the experience.
Following the completion of the journey the Boeing Stearman will be shipped to America and flown across the United States to complete a world flight later in 2016, according to Curtis-Taylor’s website.