Charles Dunell and his sister Winnifred Margaret

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Type: Photographs
Date: 1929
Place: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Materials: Paper, Photographic emulsion
Collection: Lloyd Sharland collection no.2
Accession number: 2015.0007.0003

Description

A black and white photograph depicting Charles Dunell and his sister, Winnifred Margaret, standing together in a garden. Charles Dunell is wearing a flying suit and holding his flying helmet.

About the collection

The collection consists of four photographs of Charles Dunell, apprentice pilot-engineer for Australian National Airways. The photographs show Dunell dressed in his flying suit, or uniform, in different settings, and date from 1929 to 1930. One photograph shows Dunell sitting in the passenger seat of a bi-plane, probably one of the ANA training aircraft at Mascot, and another shows Dunell in his flight jacket, holding his flying helmet and some papers in his right hand, standing with his sister Winnifred Margaret Sharland, nee Dunell, the donor's mother. Charles Tett Dunell was born in England and migrated to Australia with his parents and siblings in the early 1900s. In 1929 Dunell began a pilot-engineer apprenticeship with Australian National Airways (ANA). ANA was registered in December 1928 by Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm, who ordered five tri-motor Avro X (Ten) aircraft from A V Roe and Co in England for the new company; naming them 'Southern Cloud', 'Southern Star', 'Southern Sky', 'Southern Moon' and 'Southern Sun'. On 21 March 1931, the 'Southern Cloud' failed to reach Melbourne on a scheduled service from Sydney. It was believed that the 'Southern Cloud', crashed in severe weather conditions, resulting in the deaths of the crew, pilot Captain Travis W Shortridge and apprentice Charles Dunell, and six passengers. It was Australia's first major airline disaster and led to the institution of new airline operating safety standards. The wreck of the 'Southern Cloud' was not discovered until October 1958.

Read live from the Museum's Collection API (12/11/2026, 4:58:18 am). Record last updated by the Museum 2026-09-30. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.