IN THE CHINA CLIPPER

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21991, 15 January 1937, Page 12

IN THE CHINA CLIPPER

♦_ MILLINER'S HASTY TRIP JOURNEY OF 14,000 MILES IN 18 DAYS (I'HOM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) SYDNEY, January 7. Miss Ann Hemes, oi Melbourne, became the first Australian to use the China Clipper service of Pan-Ameri-can Airways. Delayed by the shipping strike in the United States and anxious to get home she new across the North Pacific, then travelled by boat from Manila to Sourabaya, where she caught the Empire mail aeroplane. She travelled more than 14,000 miles ta "i ß sffly had to fly back, or the little hats I was bringing would have been quite out of date," was her excuse for her haste. Miss Hemes, who is a hat designer, has been to San Francisco for a Melbourne hat firm, and the shipping strike threatened to prevent her returning to Australia in time to have the sketches which she had drawn of American hats made up in time for her firm's fashion show. It seemed that she would have to stay in San Francisco for ship strikers had locked the Golden Gate. She was worried, stranded there with her small boxes and sketch books of fashion. Since no one could tell her when the next ship would sail for Australia, Miss Hemes went to Pan-Pacific Airways and booked her passage on the trans-ocean air service to Manila. On the flight to Honolulu, in the Pullman-like bunks of the flying-boat, Miss Hemes slept, but was sometimes awakened by tossing and bumping. "Next morning the commander, Captain Sullivan, told me we had flown through a snow storm over the sea during the night, the first he had ever experienced," she said. The flight from San Francisco to Manila, via Honolulu, Wake Island, Midway Island, and Guam, took five days and a half, and cost 800 dollars. On the China clipper was like being in a palatial house to Miss Hemes, who was able to walk around in libraries and lounge rooms. She described her trip from San Francisco to Manila as probably "the most wonderful experience any young Australian could wish for."

"To visit Wake Island, the most unusual island in the world, was an experience in itself," she said. "A year ago, this island was uninhabited. Now it has one of the finest hotels. The island is a haven for nesting albatrosses, which cover the ground and hide it from the visitor approaching by air. The birds are so tame that I walked among them without disturbing them." ■ •