Women From Chathams Aboard Special Flight

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29803, 21 April 1962, Page 12

Women From Chathams Aboard Special Flight

Mrs L. E. Smiley, wife of a station manager at Kaingaroa, Chatham Islands, will probably be the first Chatham Islander on television. Television cameramen at Christchurch airport last evening photographed her talking to Mr N. E. Kirk, member of Parliament for the islands, after they had landed from an RN.Z.A.F Bristol Freighter, which made a special flight to the Chathams yesterday. Mr Kirk made the round trip. The flight was arranged to bring back six Christchurch men, members of the lines staff of the Post Office engineering branch, who have been at the Chathams since January installing telephone lines for the opening of the new manual telephone exchange. Had the flight no* been arranged, they would have been stranded on the Chathams for several more weeks.

Mrs Smiley came on the flight to get hospital treat, ment in Wellington. She is not seriously ill, but requires treatment beyond the capacity of the small hospital on the islands. She brought her son, Mark, aged eight, with her.. He is a Correspondence School pupil. Mrs Smiley and her husband have been five years in Kaingaroa Mr Smiley was born on the Chathams, but left in 1934. After farming at Waverley, in the North Island. Mr Smiley decided to return to the Chathams to manage Barker Bros, station of 10.000 acres at Kaingaroa. on the north-east corner of the main island. Their homestead is right above Skirmish Bay, where Broughton, the diScoverer of the Chathams landed in 1792.

For a sea passage to New Zealand. Mrs Smiley must usually start her journey a day ahead of her departure date from the islands, in

order to make the 40-mile journey to Waitangi. But this time, she was lucky. The Bristol freighter touched down on the landing strip at Haupupu, only seven miles from her homestead Nevertheless it still took her threequarters of an hour to make the journey io the airstrip, by utility vehicle, and by tractor and trailer across the shallows of part of the extensive Te Whanga lagoon. “The weather on the islands has been pretty good lately, although we had a lot of rain last week,” said Mrs Smiley last evening. “I suppose the main news is that we now have the telephone on the islands,” said Mrs Smiley. “We expect to have it on at our station some time, but the cable will have to be laid across Te Whanga lagoon. We are classed as an out-^tation —our nearest neighbour is nine miles away—and have the radio-telephone link with Waitangi twice a day.

"Of course, we also have the radio for news. We all listen to the 9 o’clock news on our transistors. We find reception from 2YA is best, better than 3YA.” Mrs Smiley has a married couple to help with work at the homestead, and two cooks at shearing time, when an 18man gang is employed. The station runs 8500 sheep, and 700-800 head of cattle. The station’s wool clip, of 195 bales, was offered at the recent Christchurch sale. Another woman who returned from the Chathams with Mrs Smiley was Sister Mary Romanus. of the Society of Mary, who has been' three years and a half at her society’s mission station. She is being replaced by a Samoan, Sister Mary Helena, who made the trip in the Bristol freighter yesterday morning.