A tribute to the age of flying boats, that ended with the last Sunderland flight between Rose Bay and Lord Howe Island in 1974. It opens with a spectacular 5 minute sequence, shot with 11 cameras, of the last commercial flight coming in to land at Rose Bay. The film draws on archival footage from the days when you could fly in luxury from London to Australia in just 5 days, touching down on the waters of Egypt, Arabia, Celylon and Indonesia on the way. It details the hard working “flying porcupines”, Catalinas and Sunderlands that patrolled the North Sea and the Indian Ocean in WW2. It pays tribute to great navigators like P.G.Taylor who pioneered routes across the Pacific Ocean with Charles Kingsford Smith. And it investigates the business side of the industry, from the WW2 pilots who bought up mothballed aeroplanes for next to nothing, to the national behemoths who put the small operators out of business. Accompanied by the gorgeous music of Georg Philipp Telemann played by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.