Way back in the day, before all the modern means of transportation and communication, there was a daring soul. Way back in 1858, most of us can not relate, to the shock and awe of the very first balloon flight lifting off the city of Melbourne Australia. On February 1st, back in the day, the very first hot air balloon lifted up into the air and made it successful flight. What people back then must have been thinking. When you realize that back then, it was literally horse drawn power. People still did a lot of walking.
This was the start of aviation really. Everyone always talks about the first airplane flights but what about the early balloon and zeppelin flights. It took another 50 years for engineers to create airplanes. Richmond, where the balloon took off from, is a rural area of Melbourne. Back then it was really rural, before the town hall tower went up. Before the St. Ignatius spires, the Dimmeys and even the trains and trams where ever built there. Back then the best attraction of the area was the George Coppin’s Cremome Gardens and the Pantheon Theatre. Ok so there was also a Pub. Can’t live without the Pub or the zoo or the bandstand or the lake. But on that day, it was the magical flight of a hot air balloon that captured the towns attention.
It was Mr Coppin that encouraged Charles Brown and Joseph Dean to Melbourne for the big flight. He threw in his personal, homemade muslin balloon called Australasian. It took some work to get it to the launch site in Richmond. They had to blow it up with coal gas at the city gasworks, Batman Swamp in west Melbourne. Then they had to get 30 men with a horse and cart to walk it all the way to Richmond. I wonder if they stopped for a rest at one of the five star hotels in Melbourne for a rest. Probebly not. But history of the city was made when they took off and landed 25 minutes later on Plenty Road. Weeks later Charles Brown took another flight that landed in Collingwood, and was mobbed by a crowd of people who thought it was evil for a human to fly.