PIONEERING NEW ZEALAND'S AIR

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29366, 19 November 1960, Page 3

PIONEERING NEW ZEALAND'S AIR

The Kiwi’s First Wings. By David Mulgan. Wingfield Press, Wellington. 141 pp. Index and Appendices.

This aptly-titled book is about the Walsh brothers, the true pioneers of flying in New Zealand. Inspired by aviators in the United States and Europe who had opened a new concept in transport, a number of New Zealanders attempted in the early years of this century to build flying machines. The Walsh brothers’ was. the first effort to achieve success.

With the financial help of a syndicate, they imported in August, 1910, the components of a Howard Wright biplane which with resource, skill and ingenuity they built into a serviceable aircraft and eventually made

ready for flight early in 1911. Noone in New Zealand had been instructed in the technique of flying. Vivian Walsh taught himself to fly as he went along. After weeks of taxi-ing trials, and on the morning of February 5, 1911, he took the so-named Manurewa into the air at Glenora Park, Papakura, and flew it for about 400 yards at a height of 60 feet. This was the first triumph of the Walsh brothers and the effective beginning of a story through which Mr Mulgan follows the fortunes of the brothers as aerial pioneers. Their second triumph was to design and build a flyingboat, which took the’ air on New Year’s Day, 1915; their third triumph was the establishment of the New Zealand Flying School at Kohimarama, on the shores of the Waitemata, which came into being in mid-1915 with one homebuilt flying-boat and one selftaught instructor. The school eventually won Government support and trained New Zealanders (who paid a fee for their instruction course) as pilots for the Royal Flying Corps. After the war, the Walsh brothers continued their pioneering role in New Zealand aviation, participating in the barnstorming tours of the times, giving thousands of New Zealanders their first sight' of an aircraft in flight, and hundreds first tastes of flying in the form of joy-rides. Later, a seaplane from Kohimarama carried the first air mail in New Zealand, from Auckland to Dargaville and back. These are

the bare bones of a story that Mr Mulgan fills with detail garnered from considerable research and from first-hand information from participants in the Walsh activities. It is, as Sir Leonard Isitt says in a foreword, a great story and in the telling of it there' emerges a. history of the development of flying in New Zealand. Mr Mulgan’s admiration for his subject is apparent, and few who follow him through his story will fail to share it. He has chosen in the main to tell his story in the style of unemotional, factual reporting. When recounting the vicissitudes of the brothers in the face of what appears, now to be astonishing official apathy he may at times allow hindsight to warm indignation; but this is not overdone, and it helps him to bring to the reader’s perception the vision, determination and resource of the men who laid the foundations of the great enterprise that flying has become in New Zealand. As Sir Leonard Isitt remarks, Mr Mulgan’s book will be a valuable addition to the history of aviation. It is regrettable, therefore, that it is necessary to remark that Mr Mulgan has been badly served by his proof-readers. Slips in spelling occur in the best-regulated printing houses; too many jar the reader, and there are too many here. In a book about flying, the error “Air Vice-Marshall" should not be repeated, and “clammering” (“clammering for a ride”; page 37) should never have found its Way to print.