Houdini Takes Flight

The story as it is told

Harry Houdini had escaped from handcuffs and straitjackets, and in 1910 he went looking for a new kind of freedom. He had a French biplane crated and shipped across the world to Australia, and in a paddock outside Melbourne he waited for the air to go still. When it did, he climbed in and took off, and the world's most famous escape artist became, the story says, the first person ever to fly in Australia.

What we can confirm

"Houdini made the first flight in Australia" is not exactly false. It needs the words "claimed" and "controlled."

Houdini was touring Australia in early 1910. According to aviation historian Brett Holman, he had bought a French Voisin biplane and flown it in Germany the year before, and had it crated and shipped out. He based himself at Diggers Rest, a rural spot outside Melbourne, and waited with his mechanic, Antonio Brassac, for calm air.

On the morning of March 18, 1910, he flew. The next day The Argus in Melbourne printed a statement signed by nine witnesses. As transcribed by Holman, it reads in part: "about 8 o'clock a.m., we witnessed Harry Houdini in a Voisin biplane (a French heavier than air machine) make three successful flights of from 1min. to 3½min." It adds that he "reached an altitude of 100ft., and in his longest flight traversed a distance of more than two miles." State Library Victoria's blog gives the same core facts.

The argument is about the word "first." Holman points out that Colin Defries, who was British, got a plane into the air in Sydney on December 9, 1909, three months before Houdini, but crashed it. Holman calls that powered flight but not controlled flight. He also notes that the first Australian to fly, in an Australian-built plane, was John Robertson Duigan, later in 1910. So Houdini's claim is usually phrased as the first controlled powered flight in Australia, which is how State Library Victoria puts it.

What the record supports: on March 18, 1910, at Diggers Rest, Houdini made three witnessed flights of up to three and a half minutes in a Voisin biplane. Whether that was Australia's first flight depends on whether Defries's short, crashed flight of December 1909 counts.

The facts

• Mar 18, 1910 flight claimed as first controlled powered flight in Australia; Voisin biplane; mechanic Antonio Brassac; nine witnesses; three flights; 100 ft; monuments at Diggers Rest (2010 centenary, next to an 80th-anniversary monument). Andrew McConville, State Library Victoria blog, Mar 1, 2013, blogs.slv.vic.gov.au
• Defries, Sydney, Dec 9, 1909, powered but not controlled, crashed; Duigan later in 1910. Holman (above) (secondary)
• "acclaimed as the first person to pilot a plane over Australia." LoC Information Bulletin 1997, loc.gov

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