File:SS Canonbar 'rocket mail' special cover (1934).jpg

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English: Photgraph of a special cover commemorating an event on 4 December 1934. An organisation, with the august name of the Queensland Air Mail Society, launched a rocket from Canonbar carrying 1000 ‘'commemorative covers’, in what was styled "Australia's first rocket flight S.S. Canonbar to Brisbane", The flight itself was less ambitious than it sounded; a rocket was launched, from Canonbar, toward the shoreline near the mouth of the Brisbane River. The plan was that the rocket would land on the shore and the letters it had carried would then be posted to the recipients, at the nearby Pinkenba post office. It was, at very best, only a partial success. The rocket struck a pile on the bank and ended up in the river. Fortunately, Canonbar’s captain presciently had attached a line to the rocket, allowing the container holding the mail to be dragged back to the ship, from where the letters were taken to Pinkenba and posted. The Queensland Air Mail Society was, in fact, a group of postage stamp collectors—specialising in air mail stamps—who were probably more interested in creating the ‘commemorative covers’ than in launching a 'rocket mail' service. It was their first, but not their last, unsuccessful attempt at 'rocket mail'. Serious stamp collectors of the time saw these rocket launches as bringing only ridicule upon those involved and the Post Office dissociated itself from any connection to these farcical, somewhat dangerous, and probably illegal experiments. However, in a manner, their work succeeded, as the commemorative covers from the 1934 rocket launch—and those from a later experiment in 1935, involving Maheno—are still a collectors’ item, over 80 years later, and one of the few tangible reminders today of Canonbar.
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SS Canonbar 'rocket mail' special cover (1934)

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11 January 2021

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current02:17, 12 January 2021Thumbnail for version as of 02:17, 12 January 20214,000 × 3,000 (2.23 MB)TrimmerinWikiUploaded own work with UploadWizard
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