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This clip shows adventurer Dick Smith returning to Fort Worth, Texas, USA, after completing the first solo circumnavigation of the world in a helicopter. It opens with a map tracing a line from Vancouver in Canada to Fort Worth, the final leg in Smith’s journey, and cuts to shots of an excited Smith in the helicopter. The helicopter lands at Fort Worth, where Smith is welcomed by a crowd that includes family and media. The clip is accompanied by an instrumental version of 'Click go the shears’, while a narrator gives details of Smith’s record-breaking feat. The clip concludes with an excerpt from an Australian television news report of the event.

Educational value points

• Australian businessman and adventurer Dick Smith (1944–) completed the first solo helicopter flight around the world in 1983. Smith also established two other records during this journey, becoming the first person to make a solo helicopter flight across the Atlantic Ocean and the first to make a solo helicopter flight from the USA to Australia. During the journey Smith covered 56,742 km in 315 hours of flying time.

• Dick Smith is a self-made businessman who founded the first of his many electronics outlets in 1968, and sold Dick Smith Electronics in 1982. After completing the around-the-world flight featured in this clip, Smith founded Australian Geographic magazine and became an advocate for reform of the Australian aviation industry, serving two terms as chairman of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority in the 1990s. His face is well known to consumers from labels on Dick Smith Foods, an Australian-owned brand he set up to compete with multinational companies. He continues to make long-distance flights by helicopter, aeroplane and hot-air balloon and was Australian of the Year in 1987. Smith has also campaigned on behalf of asylum seekers in detention centres, and Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks.

• Smith is shown on the third and final leg of his flight, a journey that was divided into three stages, from Fort Worth to London, London to Sydney, and then from Sydney to Fort Worth. Smith left Fort Worth on 5 August 1982 and flew via Canada, Greenland and Iceland to reach London on 19 August. The second leg, via Athens, the Middle East and Asia to Darwin and then Sydney, took from 13 September to 3 October. Smith made the final leg after the northern winter, leaving Sydney on 23 May 1983 and flying via Japan, Alaska and Canada to land at Fort Worth on 22 July.

• Smith was inspired by the early Australian aviators, who were international pioneering aviators and set numerous records for long-distance and endurance flights. Smith paid tribute to these aviators on his journey. For example he retraced Bert Hinkler’s 1928 solo flight from London to Darwin, matching his time of 15 days and delivering a copy of the London Times to Alexandria Station in the Northern Territory, just as Hinkler had. En route to Sydney, Smith visited Lorna Bonney, who had flown solo from Australia to England in 1933, and Harold Litchfield, a navigator for Charles Kingsford Smith (who had flown around the world in 1929).

• The clip shows Smith’s helicopter, the Australian Explorer, which had a distinctive blue kangaroo painted on its side. The helicopter was a Bell 206B Jetranger III, which was powered by a gas turbine engine and had a maximum speed of around 250 km per hour. It had a special long-range fuel tank that enabled Smith to fly more than 700 nautical miles (the standard tank allowed 400 nautical miles) before refuelling. It was also fitted with state-of-the-art navigation equipment, a map cabinet, a life raft with survival gear and an Arctic survival suit.

• In order to document the journey, Smith’s helicopter was fitted with a small Super 8 camera on a simple tripod-head, which was mounted on the passenger seat beside Smith, and the sound from Smith’s intercom was relayed to a tape recorder. Both camera and tape recorder were operated either manually or from switches on the pilot’s control column. Smith also had a hand-held camera and the helicopter was equipped with an autopilot to give him the freedom to film.

• Smith’s flight was a test of endurance and, exhausted by the extreme weather on the first leg, including fog, sleet, severe turbulence and subzero temperatures, he almost abandoned his attempt after he reached London. A storm had forced him to camp on an island near Frobisher Bay in Canada, where the sound of crashing icebergs prevented sleep. Later, he flew through monsoonal rain to Japan, and had to refuel on the deck of a cargo ship mid-ocean after the USSR refused to let him land on the Kuril Islands.

This clip starts approximately 44 minutes into the documentary.

This clip shows adventurer Dick Smith returning to Fort Worth, Texas, USA, after completing the first solo circumnavigation of the world in a helicopter. It opens with a map tracing a line from Vancouver in Canada to Fort Worth, the final leg in Smith’s journey, and cuts to shots of an excited Smith in the helicopter. The helicopter lands at Fort Worth, where Smith is welcomed by a crowd that includes family and media. A narrator gives details of Smith’s record-breaking feat. The clip concludes with an excerpt from an Australian television news report of the event.
Narrator Dick Smith has been in the air for an incredible total of 315 hours, and he’s almost back to where it began.

Dick Smith Well, I’m – I’m very excited, because I’ve just pulled out this last map, which brings me into Fort Worth, and there was my track when I left nearly a year ago, tracking out from Fort Worth towards England. So to be back on the same map that I was using – oh, you’ve got no idea how happy I am. Only another, what, about 200 nautical miles to go. Really fantastic. I’ll keep this map forever. Well, talk about exciting. In fact, there’s a helicopter up there. Don’t know if you can see it – ha! Bell have sent a helicopter out to me. I’m just flying along now the main interstate highway and heading – only a couple of miles to go. Talk about…

Radio: (inaudible)

Dick Smith That’s the bell control.

Narrator Since he left Fort Worth nearly 12 months before, Dick Smith has covered 60,000km – the equivalent of one and a half times around the world at the equator.

Dick Smith Well, I’m here. The bell factory’s coming up. Fantastic!

Radio PHD roger, clear to cross the field on a right-hand orbit is approved, sir. The wind is south-east at 5 knots.

Dick Smith Ah, Roger it’s good to be back.

Radio Yeah. Welcome home.

Dick Smith Thank you.

Radio Sir –(inaudible)-you’re clear to land – the wind is indicating one five zero degrees at zero five. And they’d like for you to park up there just at the end of that red line where the people are standing.

Narrator The epic flight is over, and fittingly, Australian television is there for Dick Smith’s moment of triumph.

Reporter “The kangaroo has landed” – at least, that’s the way they put it here at Fort Worth in Texas when Dick Smith arrived this morning on the last leg of his solo helicopter trip around the world. Dick Smith left here almost exactly one year ago. Since that time, he’s covered more than 35,000 miles on in his small Bell JetRanger, breaking more than four world records along the way, including that of the first solo helicopter crossing of the Atlantic. The big question, of course, is why does he do it?

Dick Smith It was a challenge. It had never been done before, and I wanted to see what it would be like. I’d read so much about the early aviators. I thought, “Well, what’s it like doing a long-distance flight?”- now I know.

Reporter What’s the most dangerous moment you had?

Dick Smith Probably the most dangerous thing, if it wasn’t the weather in the northern Atlantic, which was atrocious, it was that attempt to fly from Japan to Alaska and then find a ship halfway and then refuel from 44-gallon drums on the ship. When I thought of the idea originally, I thought, 'Well, that’s crazy. Surely the Russians will let me land.’ Finally, they didn’t. And I suppose my bluff was called. I then decided to go ahead and do it, and everything could have gone wrong, and everything just went right and I just got away with it.

Reporter And so it’s over. Another first for Australia, complete with a telegram of congratulations from Buckingham Palace.