the first trans-Tasman air crossing, 1928

Southern Cross, a Fokker F.VIIb/3m trimotor monoplane. A little over three months before the first trans-Tasman crossing,Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew made the first ever trans-Pacific flight to Australia from the mainland USA in it, about 7,250 miles (11,670 km).

Charles Edward Kingsford Smith was born in a suburb of Brisbane on 9 February 1897 and became Australia's most famous pioneer aviator. The Sydney International Airport is named after him.

This First Day Cover marks the first air crossing of the Tasman Sea on 10 September 1928 from Richmond near Sydney to "landfall near Cook Strait" in the Southern Cross. Accompanying him were Charles Ulm, navigator Harold Arthur Litchfield, and radio operator Thomas H. McWilliams, a New Zealander made available by the NZ Government

Charles Kingsford Smith's demise came when he and co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge were flying the Lady Southern Cross overnight from Allahabad, India, to Singapore, as part of their attempt to break the England-Australia speed record held by C. W. A. Scott and Tom Campbell Black, when they disappeared over the Andaman Sea in the early hours of 8 November 1935. Their bodies were never recovered.