TRACKS SEEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 139, 14 June 1932, Page 7

TRACKS SEEN.

WYNDHAM DISTRICT. Search for Missing German Airmen. FLIGHT ACROSS TIMOR SEA. (United P.A.—Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Received 11 a.m.) FERTH, this day. Information hs's been received in Perth from the Drysdale Mission, North-West Australia, that the tracks of two white men have been discovered by native messengers attached to the mission. ' The tracks were seen 100 miles north-west of YVyndham and are believed to have been made by the crew of the missing Junkers hydroplane, Hans Bertram and a companion named Glausmann. There lias been 110 news of the two men since they left ICoepang, Timor Island, for Darwin at midnight on May 15. A cigarette case 011 which are engraved the initials "5.8." and some German writing scratched with a nail, also a handkerchief, have been found. The tracks were lost on a rocky ridge. Native runners carried a letter from Father Cubero to the Wyndham police. The message on the cigarette case has not yet been translated. Father Oubero's letter stated: "I gauge the time when the articles were dropped to be May 20. Natives have been instructed to search for two men. The possibility 'of the airmen surviving is in their favour. The country is very rough and mountainous, but there is plenty of fresh water, fish and game." Airmen in a West Australian Airways aeroplane, now located at Wyndham, and a local ground party have begun to search the whole of the North-West Territory. Hans Bertram and .Glausmann were engaged in a flight, from Hongkong to Australia, and started on the last stage of the journey, across the Timor Sea. Searches were carried out over a large area of ocean and along th» northern coast of Australia, but no trace of the two men was discovered. The Drysdale mission figured largely in the story of the Southern Cross when that famous machine was lost in the vicinity for 13 days in 1029.