Blandford Forum Camera Club

On Tuesday 20^th April we were entertained by club member Peter Gafney who gave us a DPI - illustrated talk on his sojourn ‘down under’ in 1967.  More specifically, his talk had to do with his visit to Adelaide and the Woomera rocket range, to which his work for EMI had taken him.  He gave us details of his flight to Australia, on a Bristol ‘Brittania’, that proved to be an adventure and a story in itself.  We were interested to hear that the sole remaining Brittania is to be preserved and has been taken to Liverpool where it is being reassembled and will be on permanent display at Speke, Liverpool.  This location is appropriate because of its close associations with British Eagle International Airlines which used these aircraft for a number of years.   

His photographs were taken using a Yashica 35mm camera, bought in Singapore on the outward journey, loaded with the very slow, but sharp, Kodachrome 25 colour reversal film.  For the purposes of his presentation he had created digital images from these 40+ year old slides but without destroying their period character.   Peter brought the Yashica with him to the presentation together with various artefacts including a hand-made and skilfully engraved boomerang presented to him by an aboriginal friend.    

 His presentation ended, as it had begun, with details of his return and mercifully event-free, journey after which he had completed a round trip of some 30000 miles - and thus concluded what, for many of us, was a nostalgic look at the aerospace technology of the past.  Could this period be said to have been a ‘high point’ in UK rocket technology perhaps?    

Malcolm Bowditch