Aviation festival set to take off

AN event celebrating aviation history will take place in a Northside village this Sunday, June 17.

The Southern Cross Festival is held annually to mark the first ever transatlantic flight from east to west in 1930.  

The flight of the Southern Cross, captained by Charles Kingsford Smith, took off from Portmarnock beach. 

On Sunday a garden party/musical tribute will take place in the gardens of the Portmarnock Hotel and Golf Links and there will be a Pop-Up Hedge School housed in marquees on the green space around the Southern Cross monument. 

Local historians and aviation experts will be on hand to share their specialist knowledge. Watch out for a surprise appearance of ‘Charles Kingsford Smith’, complete in his flying outfit!

For those looking for something a little different this year, the organisers have hired a 1930s bus, complete with a bus conductor who, hopefully, will entertain you with not just the history of the flight but also the contents of the string bag he is taking back for his 1930s tea!

To complete this picture of life at the time of this historic flight several of Portmarnock’s local traders have joined in and there will be displays and storyboards outside their shop presenting aspects of life in the 1930s. So if you have a yearning for some crubeens make your way to Smith’s!

The bus will run between the beach and the village for three hours and will stop to enable those dressed up for the day to have authentic photographs taken.

The bus only holds 12 at a time and the fare is €1.

The festival committee feels that it is really important that people know and care about Portmarnock’s place in history.

For many, Portmarnock is the place you go to when the sun is splitting the stones, and what better place is there? 

Three miles of wonderful beach and shallow, safe sea. A haven on a hot day.

But nearly 90 years ago Portmarnock made world history as the historic flight of the Southern Cross plane used the three miles of smooth sand as a runway. In 1930 Dublin Airport was still a gleam in someone’s eye!

Thousands turned up to the beach that morning in June 1930. They came to witness and cheer on Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew on their historic, ground breaking flight, the very first successful flight from Europe to America.

On Sunday, the Hedge School will open its doors at 12noon and the music starts at 2.30pm. It’s expected that the displays in the village will be ready by 11.30am and the bus will run from 1pm to 4pm. 

Local musicians, including Portmarnock’s Sea Sharps Barbers Shop Chorus (2016 All Ireland Champions) will be taking part.

The organisers said that all of these celebrations would not be possible without the continued support of both the Dublin Airport Authority (daa) and the Portmarnock Hotel and Golf Links, whose “commitment to community affairs is wonderful”.

Fingal County Council is also behind the event and their grant enables them to extend and take off in other directions.