Everyone knows Don Bradman was born and spent his first two and a half years in Cootamundra, but few realise that a founder of Australia's aviation industry lived here for a decade of high achievement, including breaking international flying records and operating a thriving airmail business.
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Amateur historian, retired farmer, and Cootamundra Rotarian Hugh Hamilton is dismayed that people know so little of the aviator, and will tell his story at a U3A lecture next Wednesday, May 1, at the Stephen Ward rooms at 2.30pm.
The once-famous but now all but forgotten aviator is Arthur Butler, who came to Cootamundra in 1929, and a year later with help from a local engineer built the first all-metal framed aircraft in Australia.
A year after that he flew from England to Australia in a tiny plane only 5.4 metres long and 1.6 metres high - short enough for an adult to see over.
Not only did he complete the arduous adventure-packed flight, getting only 27 hours sleep, he did so in just over nine days, breaking the existing world record for such a flight.
But his real claim to fame lay in his founding in 1934 in Cootamundra of Butler Air Transport (BAT) - a small company that grew into the largest regional airline in the world in terms of air miles flown.
When British Imperial Airways started carrying mail from England to Singapore in 1934, the new Qantas airline picked it up and delivered it to Charleville en route to Brisbane, and BAT won the contract to carry it from Charleville to Cootamundra, where it connected with the Sydney-Melbourne express trains for distribution.
BAT won the contract against 36 contenders - an impressive achievement for a Cootamundra business - and bought two De Havilland DH 84 Dragons to perform the service up to three times a week.
The contract continued until 1938 when Qantas started carrying the mail to Sydney in flying boats.
BAT moved to Sydney, built advanced engineering works and did a huge amount of engineering work for the air force during the war.
After the war BAT became a substantial regional airline flying to northern NSW and southern Queensland and buying two Vickers Viscount aircraft, only the second airline in Australia to have them.
Then in 1957 BAT was taken over by Ansett. In 1958 Arthur received an OBE for his services to aviation.
With aviatrix Nancy Bird Walton, after whom the new airport at Badgery's Creek will be named, he founded the NSW Air Ambulance.
Nancy Bird described Arthur as "the most understated aviator in Australia".
The only reminder of Arthur Butler's his influential decade here is that the Cootamundra Air Terminal was named "The Arthur Butler Terminal" in 2007.
Mr Hamilton learned to fly as a national serviceman in 1953, and although most of his time subsequently was taken with farming, at Ilabo and then Frampton, before his retirement to Cootamundra 15 years ago, he occasionally went on flights with the Aero Club and maintained a life-long interest in flying.
He believes Arthur Butler should be commemorated with a statue in a prominent position in Cootamundra and deserves every bit as much respect as "our Don".
