Western air ways: Making aviation in Western Australia 1919-1941

This thesis is about the development of aviation in Western Australia from 1919 to 1941. It includes a detailed description of the major events which took place in the state during that period and of many related events in other places which combined to create the direction which the development of aviation took in this state. The thesis concludes that Western Australia’s isolation from the rest of Australia, politically and geographically, and its even greater isolation from the centre of the British Empire, meant that Western Australians had almost no control over the aviation services which they used. Aviation started early in Western Australia but the state's small population and large distances, as well as the factors of isolation, meant that it developed slowly during the 1920s. There was a brief flowering of activity at the end of the decade but it withered under the pressure of the depression. Developments in the 1930s were the direct result of Commonwealth government planning for the introduction of air services to Britain and growing local commercial support for aviation which followed from government led developments. Preparations for war and the first couple of years fighting, before Japan entered the war, led to even greater Commonwealth control over aviation. The evidence used in this thesis is analyzed from various perspectives but most commonly as politics, imperial relations and administration. This is because they were the main factors to influence aviation’s development when almost all successful air services in Australia were regulated by and often subsidised by the Commonwealth government