Richard Pearse Memorial

On or about the 31st March 1903 a small group of spectators - some excited - some sceptical - assembled on a back road in South Canterbury, New Zealand, to watch Richard Pearse - alias Mad Pearse - wheel out his home-made monoplane with its home-made petroll engine , and start it up.

It fired and Pearse taxied cautiously along the road then opened the throttle.
The machine became airborne, flew erratically, then veered onto a gorse hedge some 12 feet in height.

This powered takeoff antedated the Wright Brothers by some nine months,
but Pearse himself would not claim it as a "flight" in his own definition of the word. "Flight" to him meant sustained and controlled flying.

This excerpt is taken from a book written by Gordon Ogilvie called
'The Riddle of Richard Pearse" a book that has been in my late husbands library for a good number of years and is interesting reading.