FLIGHT OF ABORIGINES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 98, 6 February 1936, Page 10

FLIGHT OF ABORIGINES

AEROPLANE OVER SYDNEY. bodies painted for, trip. Six North. Queensland aborigines, visitors from the stone age, mac c flights in an aeroplane at -Mascot, Svdnev, recently. It was a great occasion for them, and they dressed m ceremonial paint-wide stripes of white pigment, down their chocolate chests, white rings round their legs, and a dab or two on their faces. I hoy belong to the company of aborigines appearing in a film. The three aborigines who made the first of two flights over Sydney seemed odclly unimpressed by their new experience while they were in the air, and by the discovery of the new world one looks down upon from an aeroplane, with its dolls’ houses, miniature cars and railway trains, and toy gasometers. One of them took a pet python with him and sat with it curled round his glistening, almost-naked body, stroking it and taking little notice of the world below him. The others sat motionlessly looking out of the windows, and their faces did not flicker even ior bumps or the banking or the lauding. The second party was more excited, and one of them said he <lid not want to go up again; so did Frank Laura, who had taken the snake wrC?i him. He remarked wryly that he had had enough of it, hut the • snake did not seem to mind it. The others, however, were delighted, and ready for more.