AustLit

'It was not a hunch that made Bernard O'Reilly set off into the rainforest in the early afternoon of Saturday 27 February 1937, eight days after an Airlines of Australia Stinson aircraft went missing on a flight to Sydney from Brisbane's Archerfield Aerodrome. A believer, he was comfortable with the possibility that he had been chosen for the mission. Having 'spent most of his life in unwittingly fitting himself out for such a job', O'Reilly thought it 'quite natural' to find inspired within him 'the reasoning and initiative which would send that man out on his own accord', a sign that there was 'a clear purpose behind it all'.' (Introduction)