Precisely 35 years ago, on August 24, 1984, Barry Conyngham’s opera Fly was premiered by the Victorian State Opera. At the time, it was the first Australian opera to be presented on the stage of the State Theatre of the Victorian Arts Centre.

Sam Roberts-Smith and Lisette Bolton in Lyric Opera of Melbourne’s Fly. Photo © Lachlan Woods

Fly is the story of the Australian aeronautical pioneer and inventor Lawrence Hargrave (1850-1915), the man immortalised on our first $20 note. A large stretch of scenic coastal road between Sydney and Wollongong has also been named after him; there is usually quite a crowd at the cliffs near Stanwell Park where Hargrave flew his kites and machines into the air. Hargrave’s story – also the subject of the 1988 opera by Nigel Butterley – is one of frustration at the pig-headedness of Australian bureaucracy, near-despair at lost opportunities and lack of recognition. Why we continue to return to our defeats and failures (e.g. Eureka, Gallipoli, Burke and Wills, Leichhardt etc.) as subjects for operas or other musical settings has long bemused international visitors. “Myths in reverse,” the expatriate poet Peter Porter once wrote, “with...