AIRMEN'S CHANCES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 83, 9 April 1929, Page 7

AIRMEN'S CHANCES.

Where The Southern Cross

Disappeared.

VERY WILD COUNTRY,

(By Telegraph.—Special to " St^r.")

WELLINGTON, this day,

! "It is a real never-never land," stated | Mr. J. Gordon, of the Harbour Board j staff, in describing the country where Kingsford Smith and his party are missing. Mr. Gordon, who spent eigl# years there, says the country north of 'Fitzroy River and westward of Wyndham is very wild. The country is a vast series of ridges, covered with dense scrub, mostly ridge gums, and of depressions iilled with dense masses of spear grass and cane grass, which grow to a great height. During the rainy season most of the depressions were vast bogs, in which it was impossible to ride a horse. < Mr. Gordon considered an aeroplane would have difficulty in landing anywhere in this country, and, even if undamaged, would have little chance of taking off again from the soft rainsoaked ground. The sea coast was wiid. desolate, and much broken by numerous gulfs, bays, and inlets, into which flowed rivers and creeks. There were hundreds of miles of mangrove swamps along the coast, and dense bush and undergrowth along the courses of the rivers and creeks, which swarmed with crocodiles and alligators.

The rivers swarmed with ducks and other wild fowl, and there were bush tiirkevs and many other birds in the scrub and forest. Snakes abounded, and mosquitoes were particularly bad. The region was so wild and broken that travelling on foot would be very slow and arduous, particularly at this time of the year. The natives were generally regarded as hostile, but they were somewhat cowardly, and might hesitate to attack four white men, especially if the latter were armed.

Mr. Gordon thinks it strange that if Kingsford Smith and his companions had landed safely nothing had yet been heard of them, as roaming natives had ways and means, including the use of smoke signals, of transmitting messages with incredible rapidity over great distances. Still, the region is so vast that if the men had landed it might be days before they met a party of roving blacks.