TOURING-BY AIR

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20989, 18 October 1933, Page 13

TOURING-BY AIR

WEEK-END VISITS TO WEST COAST TOURIST SERVICE SCHEME "If you want to go to Okura from Hokitika by any other means than by air you may spend four days on the way, but if you travel by air you can do the journey easily in one and threequarter hours. If anyone there falls sick it is a trip of a day and a half on stretchers till any faster conveyance can be used—an aeroplane tbere, and the patient is in hospital in less than two hours," said Mr J. C. Mercer when speaking at the Canterbury Automobile Association's rooms last night in support of a proposal for establishing an aviation company for carrying on touring services on the West Coast of the South Island by air. The company, which is to be known as Tourist Air Travel and Transport Service, will use a Fox Moth cabin aeroplane seating three passengers and carrying their luggage, and will be powered with a Gipsy Major engine. Captain Mercer said that he had his first flight over South Westland about a year ago and was greatly struck by the scenery and its beauties. Many of his passengers since had asked him if he could take them to these out-of-the-way places—to see from the air the everchanging scenery of bush, snow, and lake—sights denied to those who could not stand the strain and exertion of mountaineering. He said that it was not yet possible to run a service regularly from Christchurch to the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers, though what he did consider feasible was a service from Hokitika to the glaciers, as the varying weather conditions on the two coasts would not atiect it. . Such a trip would occupy from 35 to 40 minutes actual flying time, whereas the service car alone took six and a half hours. It would then be possible to leave Christchurcb by the morning train and reach the Fox glacier the same evening.

Mr Mercer next discussed the case of those who would thus be enabled to make a week-end trip to the glaciers or spend a week deer-stalking in the wooded slopes, or trout Ashing in the innumerable mountain streams which, unspoilt by frequent visitors, contained some really big fish. After his.short address, Mr Mercer showed many interesting slides of the ranges, the West Coast bush scenery, and the lakes and mountains of South Westland and Central Otago. Among those slides shown were the headwaters of the Waimakariri and Rakaia rivers, the short, precipitous course of the Arawata river, two miles wide where' it flows into Jackson's Bay, 20 miles from its source near Mount Aspiring; very clear views of Mounts Eli de Beaumont, Cook, Tasman, and Aspiring, and as the journey crossed the. divide, the southern lakes of Wanaka, Te Anau, and Manapouri. All the views shown could be seen in a round flight or' five hours, and a similar journsy by land would take the better part of five weeks. Mr Hayward, who presided over the meeting, introduced Mr Mercer as a "100 per cent, safe pilot," and said that the lecture had brought it very clearly home to him that such a service had to come.