TRANSTASMAN FLIGHT.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 198, 23 August 1928, Page 9

TRANSTASMAN FLIGHT.

SCHEME TO AID HOSPITALS.

SALE OF SILKEN FLAGS.

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.)

CHRISTCHURCH, Wednesday.

Four silken flags—the Union Jack, the New Zealand Ensign, the Royal Air Force flag and the Australian Ensign— will be carried by the aeroplane Southern Cross on its transtasman flight. It is proposed that they should be sold for charitable purposes.

The directors of Sydney Hospital, in a letter received by the North Canterbury Hospital Board, said the flags bore the signatures of Squadron-Leader Smith and Lieutenant Ulm, and would be accompanied by a certificate from the secretary of the Sydney Hospital. The silken cords with which the flags would be hung as bannerets had been forwarded by post to the Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin Hospitals.

It was asked that the flags be sold, one for each hospital, and that the terms be 50 per cent to each of the four hospitals and 50 per cent to the Sydney Hospital. Four similar flags would be sold in Sydney and the funds divided in the same way. It was considered this new link would bring New Zealand and Australia closer together, while the public would be afforded a unique opportunity of purchasing the flags as mementoes of the first flight across the Tasman.

The board referred the proposal to its Finance Committee.