Legendary aviator at one with the sky

Some people have a natural affinity for the air, the sea, or the earth.

Jim Hazelton’s was for the sky, his youngest daughter, Angie believes.

Friends and family next week are launching a book on the local flying legend to celebrate the life of this iconic aviator.

She said that her father — younger brother and co-founder with Max of local airline Hazelton’s — was a passionate pilot, rather than a driven businessman.

“He punched-out with Hazelton Airlines pretty early… but he loved flying, it was at simple as that, he was a great pilot,” Angie said proudly.

“He was a natural flyer, that’s the theme that comes through in the book, how calm, how tuned-in he was to the sky,” she added.

Starting-off instructing pupils in old pre-World War II-era Tiger Moths in the early 1950s, he then thrived in the dangerous business of agricultural flying before taking up ferrying in the 1960s.

The first Australian to fly the Pacific solos in a single-engine aircraft in 1964, Jim crossed the Pacific over 200 times, revelling in the hazardous business of ferrying light aircraft.

“The sort of things he achieved in his lifetime were amazing; we talked about a book, but he was too modest and, in the end, had prostate cancer,” Angie said.

“We had been compiling some stuff and then we met a person who had written aviation books, and we wanted to show the achievements with Dad who had such little beginnings in Orange,” she said.

Becoming a flying instructor of some renown at Bankstown Aerodrome, she said her father was never happier than in the hazardous task of transporting small aircraft across the world’s vast oceans.

Such was Jim’s love of flying that he continued to ferry to the very end of his life. Amassing more than 50,000 hours in 130 aircraft types over 64 years – he criss-crossed the globe like few pilots of his generation.

“He ended up doing mostly ‘fairy flights’; bringing planes to Australia from all around the world,” Angie explained.

“The last one he did was all the way from Greece to a company in New Zealand, he loved them, he really did,” she said.

She said that the only time her father flagged was after having a heart-valve operation following a heart-attack at a social cricket match in Spring Hill after which he was banned from flying.

“This was for a couple of years, but he kept pushing and was eventually allowed to fly again,” she said.

As well as older brother Max, flying seems in the blood of the Hazelton’s with Angie’s older brother a pilot with the former Ansett Airlines and her sister also an accomplished aviator flying in Cambodia.

“I never felt scared when flying with him, but I tell you what did frighten me, when he was in a car, he was a terrible driver!” Angie said.

The youngest of eight children to Jim and her mother, Pamela, she said her father’s life-force is the thing she remembers most.

“I know what I miss, he had an energy and a vitality. He wasn’t a very wealthy man, but he squeezed the sh*& out of life, he was driven by his passion,” she remembered.

“I think he was that kind of person that needed to be challenging himself,” she added.

With the common temperamental link between aviators and racing car drivers, the book catalogues his friendships with Graham Hill and Jimmy Clarke, with Formula One legend, (Sir) Jackie Stewart writing a touching foreword for the book.

“He taught them all to fly and was great friends with all of them,” Angie said.

“One of his stories is when he pulled-up at a petrol station with Jimmy Clarke, and there was a big billboard with Jimmy’s face on it advertising motor oil. My father said to the attendant ‘don’t you think he looks like Jimmy Clarke?’ and the attendant said, ‘No, I think you look more like Jimmy Clarke!’,” Angie laughed.

Her father, she added, came from an Australian generation in which business deals were sealed on a man’s honour, something, Angie says, that often proved a detriment to the family’s finances.

“He would agree on a handshake. He was one of those generation who trusted people — sometimes to his own detriment, but this never made him bitter. He was still as kind-hearted as ever,” Angie recalled.

“And that was just because of the kind of guy that he was,” Angie concluded.