AUSTRALIA. — The first domestic airmail service in Australia departed from Melbourne on July 16, 1914. The airmail was flown from Melbourne to Sydney by French aviator Maurice Guillaux.
The first airmail from overseas arrived in Darwin from England in a war-surplus Vickers Vimy bomber in 1919, piloted by a WWI Ace, Ross Smith and his brother Keith.
It was another twelve years before the first official overseas air mail service from Australia commenced.
The first official air mail flight from Australia to England took place in 1931 and consisted of 25 bags, weighing a total of about 300 kilograms.
The first aircraft to carry the mail overseas was supposed to have been an Imperial Airways flight, but it was forced to make an emergency landing on Timor.
Thus, aviator Charles Kingsford Smith was called in to fly from Darwin to Burma in ‘The Southern Cross’ to meet up with the Imperial Airways craft, which then carried the mail to England.
