Unexpected flight from Chile

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33874, 20 June 1975, Page 1

Unexpected flight from Chile

When the Qantas 707, which made the first non-stop flight between New Zealand and Chile earlier in the week with 138 stud sheep, returned to Auckland on Wednesday evening it had on board a Canterburyborn woman and her two young children.

Mrs H. J. MacLeay, who is the daughter of Mr and Mrs W. S. Coop, of Port Levy, said yesterday she believed that she might be the first woman to fly direct from Punta Arenas in Chile to New Zealand, and her two children, Belinda, aged six years, and Fiona, aged three years, might also be the first children to do so.

The flight was an unexpected one for the MacLeays. Mrs MacLeay and her husband and two children planned to come to New Zealand next month, but on being asked the captain of the 707 agreed to carry Mrs MacLeay and the two children on the return flight. And there was no charge. Whereas the outward journey to Punta Arenas took eight hours and a half, Mrs

MacLeay said that the return flight took 12 hours. After about four hours she said that the captain was concerned as to whether he could make the journey with the fuel for only 13 hours flying on board. At 65 degrees south the aircraft encountered head winds of up to 170 miles an hour and to find calmer conditions the City of Tamworth flew north to 62 degrees. Mrs MacLeay said that they flew within about 300 miles of the South Pole during the flight, which started with them flying into the night, followed by a short day, and as they approached

Auckland they were again heading into darkness. For Mrs MacLeay it is her first visit to her home since she went to Chile with her husband in 1968 after they were married at Port Levy. Of Scottish descent, her husband is a third generation member of the family to live in Chile. He farms a property of about 2000 acres on Isla Riesco, an island north-west of Punta Arenas, which is reached after a three-hour journey, including a 10minute trip in a barge, and another 2000-acre property about 120 miles north of Punta Arenas, partly covered in beech forest, where he also has a sawmill. Pumas On the mainland property, Mrs MacLeay said, more than 400 lambs had been killed this year by pumas. The men tracked them with dogs but they had a strong sense of human smell and were difficult to catch. Mrs MacLeay first met her husband in 1962 when she was at St Margaret’s College and Mr MacLeay had just finished attending Christ’s College. Before she was married she was a Karitane nurse.