Scotland Island’s annual dog race draws crowds and spectators, such as Isabella Parnell-Major, 13.

Dog owners must accompany their pets on race day, but don’t have to swim. Dogs can also hitch a ride on their owner’s paddle craft, but they won’t be in the running to win.

There can be only one race-day winner, and entrants known that five-time champion Cooper and his owner Martin Mullholland are the ones to beat

Race day on Scotland Island can be chaotic, as dozens of wet, four-legged friends mingle with excited spectators before lining up on the race start line.

Whether they’re racing or not, most everyone brings their dog along for Scotland Island’s annual race.

Bob Blackwood, 81, is one of the island’s longest-term residents.

Scotland Island’s annual dog race draws crowds and spectators, such as local artist Tracy Smith.

Race organiser Russell Loewenthal has maintained the light-hearted spirit of the event by keeping the entry fee the same as it’s been for almost 40 years.

Runners-up can take home the ‘Diesel King’ memorial trophy, which is awarded to the favourite performer on the day. Here, the 2011 winner Kango poses with his owner Phillip Meek.

Scotlan Island is a remote island community in an estrary in Sydney.

Charles Kingsford Smith, 1930

The Quiet Birdmen, an American fraternal society of airmen dedicated to honouring past aviators, described Smithy as the world’s No. 1 airman in 1935…and “they looked upon his death as an international tragedy and a terrific set back to aeronautical progress”.

Charles and Mary in New Zealand, 1928

Charles and his first wife, Thelma, divorced in 1929 and he married Mary Powell in 1930, with whom he had a son.

Personnel involved in the search for Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Tommy Pethybridge by Royal Air Force, November 1935

“The search for Smithy was the greatest land and sea search of all time at that point. Ships and and planes and people in outposts — it went for two weeks before it started to fade,” says historian Peter FitzSimons, who wrote a 2010 book on Kingsford Smith. “There was a view that he was indestructible,” he says. “There’s no way he could be dead. They retained hope for years after. The British Empire was still in existence and [Smithy] was a [British] national icon.”

Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm and Bob Hitchcock round Australia flight, 1927

In June 1927 Kingsford Smith and Ulm completed their first big flight, a round-Australia circuit in 10 days, 5 hours, a notable achievement with minimal navigational aids.

Charles in the cockpit of Southern Cross during his first trans-Tasman flight, 1928

Smithy’s fourth record-breaking flight of 1928 was the first crossing of the Tasman Sea from Sydney to Christchurch.

Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm

Backed by Sun Newspapers in 1927 Ulm and Kingsford Smith circumnavigated Australia in 10 days and five hours, more than halving the record. They then acquired sufficient funds to plan the first trans-Pacific flight from the United States to Australia. In a borrowed plane with three-engines they left Oakland, California, on 31 May 1928 with Ulm as co-commander and co-pilot.

American James Warner, Charles Kingsford Smith, American Harry Lyon and Australian Charles Ulm, Melbourne, 1928

The crew of the first trans-Pacific crossing from Oakland in the USA to Brisbane, in May-June 1928; Smithy’s first big international record-breaker.

T.H. McWilliam, an unidentified man, H.A. Litchfield, Charles Ulm, Charles Kingsford Smith and prime minister of New Zealand Joseph Coates, Wellington, September 1928

Charles Kingsford Smith (third from left) and then prime minister of New Zealand Joseph Coates (far right) after Kingsford Smith’s record-breaking flight from Australia to New Zealand, 1928.

Charles and Charles (Kingsford Smith and Ulm) on arrival at Auckland, New Zealand, September 1928

After their first notable flight together in 1927 and their successful first trans-Tasman crossing in 1928, Ulm and Kingsford Smith would fly together often and began their own airline in 1929. It folded in 1931.

Ulm also disappeared, just under a year before Smithy in fact, mid-flight, on his way to Hawaii.

Charles Ulm and Charles Kingsford Smith Mascot Aerodrome, Sydney, 10 June 1928

Standing on the back of a truck, shaking hands with Ulm – surrounded by a crowd at the end of first trans-Pacific flight – Smithy began to create the legend.

Sydney’s airport in Mascot, one of the oldest operating airports in the world, was dubbed the Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport in 1953 after the famous aviator.

Charles Kingsford Smith with Charles Ulm taken just after their record-breaking trans-Pacific flight, 1928

This would be one of five record-breaking flights Smithy would complete in 1928. His achievements in the primitive aircrafts of the time would have him go down in history as the “Columbus of the Skies”.

Locals crowd behind a rope cordon waiting for Charles Kingsford Smith to land, Fiji, June 1928

Smithy stopped in Fiji during one of his first record-breaking flights, the first trans-Pacific crossing. Kingsford Smith stopped in many far flung places on his travels and was often greeting with fanfare.

Wilfrid Kingsford Smith, Charles Kingsford Smith, and Thomas Martin Wilkes, New Zealand, 1930s

Despite the worrying disappearance of fellow aviator Bert Hinkler in January 1933, Charles Kingsford Smith was still taking chances, flying the Southern Cross, with an unprecedented number of people aboard, from New South Wales to New Zealand later that year.

Charles Kingsford Smith smiles for the crowd after a transatlantic flight, Chicago, 1930

On the first westbound North Atlantic plane crossing.

Charles, watching the refuelling of the Southern Cross Junior, ca. 1930

In October 1930 Smithy attempted a record-breaking solo flight from England to Darwin. This he accomplished, within ten days, beating four competitors who had left England ahead of him and breaking the last record by 5.5 days.

George ‘Scotty’ Allan (centre) watching Charles (left) shaking hands with James Mollison, ca. 1930

James Mollison was a fellow record-breaking aviator who was married for many years to Brit, Amy Johnson, best remembered as the first woman to fly solo around the world.

A young Charles and sister Elsie, ca. 1900

Charles Edward Kingsford Smith (1897-1935), was born on 9 February 1897 in Brisbane, the fifth son and seventh child in his family.

Group of people, including Charles Kingsford Smith and Pat Hall, standing in front of the Southern Cross

Southern Cross began life as the Detroiter, a polar exploration aircraft of the Detroit News-Wilkins Arctic expedition. The aircraft had crashed in Alaska in 1926, and was recovered and repaired by the Australian expedition leader, Hubert Wilkins. Wilkins, who had decided the Fokker was too large for his Arctic explorations, met with Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm in San Francisco and arranged to sell them the aircraft, without engines or instruments.

Charles Kingsford Smith with the first official air mail between Australia and England at Croydon Airport, Queensland, 1931

In November 1931 one of the planes owned by Kingsford Smith’s short-lived airline, Australian National Airways (1929-1931), was damaged in Malaya was under contract to fly Christmas mail to England. So Smithy took off in another plane to collect the stranded mail and flew it to England in time for Christmas delivery, and returned with mail for Australia. It would however spell the end of his airline, as it was the second crash in as many years.

Engineer Tommy Pethybridge working on Southern Star, with Charles Kingsford Smith, ca. 1931

Sir Charles had a hard few years as the depression hit Australia in the early 1930s. After two of the aircraft in his airline’s fleet crashed, the company was forced to fold in ’31. Nonetheless Smithy was still pushing aviation’s limits. In April 1931 he flew Southern Cross on an emergency mission to pick up mail for Australia from a damaged Imperial Airways plane in Timor. In May, he made the first flight from Australia to England carrying mail. He then again flew from Sydney to London in Southern Star carrying Christmas mail.

Charles sitting in the cockpit of a biplane next to his business manager, Beau Sheil (ca. 1933)

Charles disappeared on his way to Singapore whilst attempting to break the record for the fastest flight from England to Australia.

Beau, reported Broken Hill’s Barrier Miner newspaper, held out strong hopes for Smithy’s return in the weeks after he went missing. “He said, he himself had placed a package of food in Smithy’s plane sufficient to last five weeks. He was confident that Smithy would have been able to bring the plane down in the jungle.”

Charles Kingsford Smith (middle) standing with a group of men next to the Southern Cross, ca. 1931

The Southern Cross is now housed at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.

Charles Kingsford Smith and eight unidentified men with Southern Cross and a Fox Movietone news camera, New Zealand, 1933 or 1934

Just a year or two before his disappearance. Many historians have noted that Smithy’s continued ambition, despite the tough financial times and a number of notable aviator crashes, was beginning to take its toll.

Smithy will forever be remembered both as a daredevil and a larrikin

“His marriage could be described as liberal,” says Peter FitzSimons, whose book Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men came out in 2010. “He married very beautiful woman, but he was certainly a wild womanizer.”

“I’m not sure if he continued those habits after his second marriage though.”

Smithy hanging upside down while working as a movie stuntman in California in 1920

After a decorated performance flying planes during WWI, Charles Kingsford Smith spent a brief time working as a movie stuntman in the USA.