PENINSULA FROM THE AIR

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21354, 22 December 1934, Page 5

PENINSULA FROM THE AIR

NEW AERO CLUB TRI1» ORGANISED VARIED SCENERY OFFERED TO FLYERS Anyone who decides to avail himself of the opportunity to go on one of the hour cruises that are being organised by the Canterbury Aero Club for the holidays will be well repaid. The hour embraces a flight right round Banks Peninsula, and during those 60 minutes, the traveller in an aeroplane is enabled to look down on some of the most interesting scenery to be encountered in New Zealand. The first of these cruises was held yesterday, when the club's Fox Moth took three passengers on the new joy flight. It was the intention of the pilot to arrive back at Wigram an hour after he left, and he did so to within three minutes, having shown his passengers every detail of one of the most fertile farming districts in Ihe Dominion. The Fox Moth is a cabin aeroplane, but one of the most noticeable things about it was that as soon as it left the ground, it also left the stifling heat of Christchurch and flew through cool air till it landed again an hour later. Green Fields The trip is full of interest. Leaving Wigram, one flies above geometrically defined green and brown fields, with occasional patches of wheat looking like green pools rippled by ilhe wind. One sees- every detail on the ground with a clarity that is surprising. Miniature horses draw miniature carts through fields in which tiny men labour at gathering in the hay crops. A train, like a slowly moving insect, creeps along a line that is laid out before the llyer for miles ahead of the engine. Everything is foreshortened, but every smallest feature acquires from the air a new significance. Yesterday the flyers left Wigram at a little after noon, and flew over the flat paddocks of the plain till they came in a few minutes to the hills that rise above Halswell. Away to the right stretched the plain, brown in its summer coat, and to the left rose the scarps and domes of the hills, also in the brown covering of a very dry summer, but none the less imposing. Ranks of dark trees climbing up hillsides marked "Otahuna," the home of Sir R. Heaton Rhodes. The Blue Sea To the right the plains stretched away info the haze, with paddocks marked as though drawn by a careful draughtsman, and with occasional breaks in the symmetry where trees and red roofs denoted a village. Lake Ellesmere, shallow and v/eedy, stretched with monotonous colouring into the distance, the blue sea beyond, marking where the shingle beach ends. Directly below the machine were the valleys running up from the plain into the hills, displaying a brilliant green where the creeks wound, and on dun hillsides sombre patches of bush. Lake Forsyth, with muddy waters unruffled under the sun, was soon left, and Little River was 3000 feet beneath the aeroplane, 18 minutes after leaving Wigram. The warm and fruitful valley of Little River was left behind in a moment, and the machine topped the hills above, revealing Akaroa harbour, calm and blue. Onawe, the historic tongue of land that protrudes into the harbour near Duvauchelle, revealed each of its marks and fortifications built by the Maoris in the time of Te Rauparaha, but visible in the minutest detail from the air. Akaroa seemed asleep, its streets lifeless in the sun, showing few signs of traffic. The machine flew down the harbour, revealing peaceful bays each with its farmhouse and outbuildings laid out as in a careful plan, and in a very few minutes came to the blue water of the Pacific ocean. Turning to the north, the aeroplane skirted the land and each mile revealed some new valley and some new deep blue cove. Many Farmers At Chorlton a church was visible, and a little further on two men who were mustering sheep on horseback waved handkerchiefs to the machine. Their horses appeared tiny, but one could be seen plainly to jump a pile of logs that formed one side of the sheepyard. One hears vaguely of the Peninsula as a rich farming district, but it is only from tlhe air that one may obtain a full realisation of the denseness of the settlement there. Each valley of any size has a number of farms, and roads and tracks are visible everywhere.

The deep inlets of Pigeon Bay and Port Levy were passed, and finally Lyttelton Harbour was opened up. The Peninsula is particularly striking for the amount of country it reveals. Valley after valley, brown and green and bush-clad, slide under the machine all of it bounded by a calm blue sea, with an apparently stationary ship steaming in a patch of white. The cliffs that stand on tffe shore are beautiful in themselves, with their many coloured volcanic rock falling sheer into the sea.

Lyttelton looked very small in comparison with the wide spread of the roofs of Christchurch, but the interest of the trip did not end till the machine pulled up in front of . the Aero Club hangar, three minutes more than an hour after it left.

UNUSUAL HOLIDAY ATTRACTION The great steamship companies of the world have made thousands of people travel-minded as the result of their holiday cruises. To be "airminded" is to be more up-to-date still. The Canterbury Aero Club is instituting air cruises to-day, and these can be arranged for any day during the holidays. Naturally, Banks Peninsula has been selected for the cruise, because the journey from Christchurch to Akaroa, returning by a different route, gives passengers an unrivalled variety of scenic glories. Few countries can offer such value in a onehour cruise. The fare is SOs a passenger. Children will be carried at hall-price. They will be carried only when there are adult passengers as well, but it is not necessary for their own adult friends to travel with them. The club is available on the telephone, and will be pleased to arrange trips at any hour of the day or evening. This marks another step in the march of holiday entertainment, and it is hoped that the club's enterprise will be fully rewarded.

A woman who kept at least a hundred pets in a 20-roomed house at Bayswater, .London, has moved to Chislehurst, Kent. Her pets include seven dogs, 30 cats, 50 birds of all kinds, several monkeys—and rather than leave the mice which ran about the house to starve, she trapped them and took them too. The woman is the Hon. Mrs Maclaren Morrison, the 70-year-old daughter of Lord Pirbright, twice Secretary for the Colonies, and a niece of the Baron de Worms, a friend of King Edward. "I shall now be able to do as I like," said Mrs Morrison. The new house is a large one on a nine and-a-half acre estate.