VH-UQW  Percival D.1 Gull 4                          (c/n D.24)

                                 

                                      This image was taken from a post card published, in the mid 1930s, by the printing firm for
                                      whom my father worked.   It depicts the Gull used by Donald Mackay in the 1935 Mackay
                                      Aerial Reconnaissance Survey Expedition (of Central Australia) over the old Ascot Racecourse.
                                      Pilot for the expedition was Frank Neale.  The aircraft was first registered to Mackay in May
                                      of 1933.   After a series of different owners in the latter 1930s it wound up with John Bowden's
                                      Bowden Air Transport of Broken Hill in 1944.    It was destroyed by fire in the Bowden work-
                                      shop in April 1945.  In the shot below, circa 1935, from the E.W. Searle collection (via the
                                      NLA) the Gull is carrying race or rally number 22.