In a 1960 "Model News" Monty Tyrrell wrote that in Melbourne "the first experimental models were built back in 1946."

George Levine, Alan Lim Joon, Ted Gregory and Keith Hearn were amongst the first to get started.  Keith Hearn, in partnership with his brothers Jack and Bruce, went on to establish the biggest hobby dealers in the country... Hearns Hobbies.

1.  Photographed by John Wynne in 1947, at right is Keith Hearn's big model powered by a Forster 49.

By 1947 the Eastern Suburbs Model Aeroplane Club had grown up at Surrey Park.  Each Sunday morning the sceptics and free flight types like Monty freely criticised the "spin dizzies" and thought the fad would only be an obscure one with a minority following.  Models just flew round and round until Ted Gregory showed a model could be looped and flown inverted.

2.  Ted Gregory and his model with Tony Farnan looking on.  By mid 1948 Gregory was doing the complete stunt book, and at the first post war Nats in 1948 he won the stunt event, setting the pattern for Victoria to dominate Australian stunt for a very long time.

By 1949 control line flying was firmly established with Lim Joon bettering 120 mph consistently in speed, and a line up of stunt pilots acknowledged as the best in Australia regularly giving demonstration exhibitions at suburban and country carnivals.

3.  1950 Nationals junior stunt champion, Johnny Lamont, with his Frog 500 powered Super Skylark designed by Jack Hearn.  The Skylark embodied features that later became well known in Hearns kitted models such as the Demons and Hellcats.

1950 was the year when team speed was first run at an Australian Nats.  Apparently the planes had all had the sword half way through, but the race was finished with relay runners from each State carrying the wreckage of their particular entry in the final.

4.  Nationals open stunt champion in 1950 and again in 1951 was Monty Tyrrell, who had by then overcome his reservations about "spin dizzies".

5.  A keen crowd of spectators would reliably gather at demonstrations of control line flying given during the nineteen fifties.  Pictured here is Tony Farnan in 1957, about to give a demonstration flight with his new Ramrod, a plane designed by Victorian stunt champion Ian Hooper, and kitted by Montgomery Models.