GREAT AIR MAIL

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 27, 1 February 1924, Page 3

GREAT AIR MAIL

IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

DISTANCE EXTENDED.

(WOK ODR OWM CO&KiapONDENT.)

SYDNEY, 24th January. The success of the long distance air mail and passenger service, which has been running regularly in Western Australia for more than two years, is being strikingly demonstrated this week by its extension to serve an additional distance of about 250 miles. Hitherto the mail has started from the Tail head at Geraldton, meeting all trains from Perth and carrying passengers and mails right up to Derby, right up on the north-west coast of the continent. The flying distance from Geraldton to Derby .is about 1000 miles. With this week the service is being extended to the capital city, Perth, itself, thus adding about 250 miles on to the trip. The service, which is, conducted by contractors under the Federal Government, is the only one of itsvkind in the Commonwealth, although it is intended to establish others in the eastern states, and has proved probably the most remarkable and consistently successful in the world. Its vast distances have been covered with almost clockwork regularity, and the number of passengers, freight, and mails has gone on steadily increasing, so that this year two additional aeroplanes will be landed. These ■ will be of the latest British Commercial type, capable of carrying four passengers with mail and freight in addition to "the pilot. The service has become very popular amongst station owners, many of whom have cleared landing grounds near to their homesteads. The 'planes regularly make detours to land or* take up passengers, being advised by telephone when one wishes to be taken up. A special landing fee is charged for this service. Practically every trip is fully booked all along the long route, and. although, a special fee is charged for letters intended for air transit, this is effected so rapidly—the distance from Perth to Derby and back, which, with detours, often involves nearly three thousand miles travelling, being performed in five, days—that all urgent correspondence is entrusted to it. Although few people make the entire journey, the service depending upon passengers between the stages, it has proved of, great Value in several" instances of giving visitors to the Commonwealth a; unique opportunity of obtaining a bird's-eye view of a Huge tract of Australian territory, right up into the tropical coastlands of the Kimberley district. It is intended that eventually there shall be a chain of services which will connect up the north and south and the east and west. With a service from Brisbane to Sydney another from Sydney to Melbourne another from Melbourne to Adelaide, and another right across the continent from Adelaide to Perth, where the present service from Perth to the far northwest . would be met, there would be little needed to complete the aerial encirclement of the continent and the wonderful success of the Western venture enormously to bringing this bold conception into focus. -