This history is written in traditional narrative form with extensive endnotes, bibliography and index. It’s chapters are organized to focus on the highlights of the development of Australian civil aviation; beginning with the earliest flights, early attempts to establish a civil aviation industry, government assistance and regulation, the first Australian airlines, the creation of an ‘air-minded’ society, the effects of the great depression, the rapid growth and early maturity of the industry in the 1930s, the introduction of the first air services beyond Australian shores, the two crisis of 1938 that reshaped Australian civil aviation and the industry on the verge of World War II.