AN ADVENTUROUS FLIGHT

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21714, 22 February 1936, Page 13

AN ADVENTUROUS FLIGHT

—! f AUSTRALIAN AIRMEN'S FEAT DANGER AND HARDSHIP ON SURVEY (Faoai otm own coeeespondest.) SYDNEY, February 14. For adventure and resource, the 10,000 miles survey flight, lasting six and &»half months, round Australia and to Papua, recently completed by six members of thfe Royal Australian,, Air Force, in a 10-year-old Southampton flying-boat must I rank among the notable flights in aviation history. By meeting and overcoming problems such as major engine trouble on a tropical mud flat; finding lost aviators on the uncharted reaches of the Fly river, Papua; keeping on friendly terms with primitive Papuans; nursing a desperately sick member of the crew 200 miles from civilisation in a tem-porarily-disabled seaplane; living on their skill with the rifle and shotgun and on native food when the flight took them away from ciVillsatioh for weeks at a stretch; and keeping their boat in flying trim under great difficulties in the tropics, these six Australians have added tremendously to the prestige of the Air Force. On one occasion the natives of the Purari Delta, as a great honour to the white men who had arrived in the "big fella pigeon," invited them to their communal house, where they were proudly shown about 1000 human skulls, trophies of raids on neighbouring tribes in the headhunting days. Although' not afraid that their own would increase the total, because the natives were friendly, the airmen took shotguns and sporting rifles—"just for safety," as Squadron Leader Hempel, the expedition's leader, put it. On leaving they were presented with a number of skulls which they dared not refuse for fear of offending their primitive hosts. * . .' Jfurpose of Flight The purpose of the flight was to make a survey of possible seaplane bases between Sydney and Darwin, for the Empire air mail scheme, but when they had partially completed this work, they flew to New Guinea to look for a missing aviator on the Fly river. After they had found him, they completed a survey of the south coast of Papua. There they met their greatest difficulties and hardships, principally through lack of suitable food and by'maintenance troubles. At Daru, they had tp change both their 10001 b engines, which were needing overhaul. For more than a fortnight they stumbled and slithered in black ooze two feet deep and humid heat before the engines were safely installed again. Many times while on this coast they depended solely for food on the yams, taros and sago the natives brought them, and on ducks and geese they had shot. They had a small petrol stove and an iron camp oven in which they cooked duck pies and pasties. Everywhere they landed, even in uncontrolled parts, the natives were friendly and anxious to help. Mosquitoes and sandflies, together with the unceasing attacks of rust on the metal portions of their boat in the humid tropical climate were their greatest trials.' When they could not get ashore because of crocodiles in the large river estuaries, or because of wide mud fiats, they slept in the Cramped hull of the flying-boat, rigging mosquito mets over the cockpits to keep the insects out. Down with Fever A. 500-miles overland flight from Bowen to Korumba in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and the anxious crossing of the Great Australian Bight in a storm in a direct line, instead of along-the coast because the boat did not have sufficient flying-range I for the coast route, were dismissed by Squadron Leader Hempel aS | "part of the job." Stormbound at 1 Israelite Bay, on the west of the Bight, for four days and unable to launch their collapsible boat and get ashore, they ran short of food and had to radio to Esperance for food and petrol. Their most anxious moments, Hempel said, were when the boat broke down at Mapoon, in Northern Australia, and Leading Aircraftsman J. A. O'Donnel developed fever. Unable to fly him the 200 miles from there to Thursday Island, and with nothing but the standard R.A.A.F. medical kit, they watched O'Donnel's temperature climb to 105 degrees. In desperation they sent a wireless message to Thursday Island, where Dr. Dowling spent hours at the wireless station, diagnosed the illness as malaria, and prescribed treatment. With no delicacies but tinned milk and soup from ducks and kangaroos, they pulled O'Donnel through. At Mapoon a wing tip, float, and tail plane were damaged, and the crew had to wait for spares to arrive -from. Melbourne, Vs\rt .irv Papua, where a similar accident occurred, they repaired the damage with wood from petrol cases.