Colin Defries was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 pilot

Aviator

An aviator is a person who flies an aircraft. The first recorded use of the term was in 1887, as a variation of 'aviation', from the Latin avis , coined in 1863 by G. de la Landelle in Aviation Ou Navigation Aérienne...

 who made the first attempted powered flight over Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 on 9 December 1909 in Victoria Park racecourse. He crashed his biplane

Biplane

A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two superimposed main wings. The Wright brothers' Wright Flyer used a biplane design, as did most aircraft in the early years of aviation. While a biplane wing structure has a structural advantage, it produces more drag than a similar monoplane wing...

 when he lost control upon reaching for his hat, which was being blown off by the wind . With the Aerial League and a newspaper denying that the flight had occurred at all, much less succeeded , Defries made a second attempt on 18 December . Finally, his mechanic, R. C. Banks made an attempt of his own on 1 March 1910, and crashed the plane again . Harry Houdini

Harry Houdini

Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-born American magician and escapologist, stunt performer, actor and film producer noted for his sensational escape acts...

accomplished the first successfully landed powered flight over Australia on 18 March 1910.