1850 - 1915

Lawrence Hargrave was an aviation pioneer and inventor whose kite experiments inspired Bondi Beach’s first Festival of the Winds, held in September 1978. He’s most noted for his work on the box kite, curved aerofoils and the rotary engine and also known for his controversial theory, published in 1909, that a North Bondi rock engraving was evidence of Spanish habitation of Australia as early as 1595. According to the theory, Spanish mariner Lope de Vega and shipmates on the Santa Isabel (or Ysabel) had been separated from the fleet that navigator Alvaro de Mendana de Neira had organised in order to settle the Solomon Islands, and the breakaway party had travelled as far south as Sydney Harbour, where they stayed for an estimated three years before being rescued. The theory was heavily debated and was disputed by Royal Australian Historical Society president James H. Watson.

Lawrence was born in Greenwich, England in 1850 and emigrated to Australia with his family in 1865. He became a prolific engineer, explorer, astronomer, experimenter, inventor and aeronautical pioneer. His many posthumous honours and memorials were well deserved and include use of his name for the Hargrave Park low-income housing settlement, established near Warwick Farm in south-western Sydney after World War 2, and Lawrence Hargrave Drive, which stretches from Helensburgh to Thirroul, along with use of an engraving of him and some of his gliders for the reverse side of the Australian $20 note between 1966 and 1994.

His only son Geoffrey was killed during World War I, at the Battle of Gallipoli in May 1915, and Lawrence himself also died in 1915, at age 65, from peritonitis following appendicitis. He was buried in Waverley Cemetery, and his Point Piper home bears a memorial plaque.

Courtesy the Waverley Library Local Studies Collection.