OVER THE CITY

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 53, 11 September 1928, Page 12

OVER THE CITY

THE AIRPLANE'S VISIT WELLINGTON'S BRIEF GLIMPSE INTENSE EXCITEMENT Largely owing to the almost total absence of progress reports and to the unexpectedly fast time registered by the Southern Cross, Wellington was taken quite unawares by the arrival of the giant monoplane, which suddenly appeared like a bolt from the blue at 7.15 this morning. Hundreds were fortun- ' ato in either hearing or seeing the aor-

Ed on her to be read. Some are posi-1 tive that in passing over Government House (or was it a neighbouring house?), the Southern Cross dipped as if paying a courtesy call, but that may have been but a small flight of imagination. Within five minutes or less the 'plane had come and gone, Wellington' 3 last glimpse of her being as she disappeared over the Heads. Estimates vary as to the height at which the Southern Cross flow over the city: some say that she was but a few hundred feet up, others that her altitude was never less than a thousand feet, and the latter are probably right. What struck most onlookers was the speed of the 'plane, especially when her circle over the city was completed and she headed for the South. It was all over almost in a flash. If you wanted to see the "plane there was no time to dress or to attend to the waiting breakfast. Half-shaved- men, with the lather still on their faces, halfdressed ladies, wrapped in anything but normal external garments, gazed in astonishment as the 'plane, to bo in turn gazed at in amusement by others. People were too dumbfounded to cheer, not that the airmen would havo heard them if they had: some waved anything handy, whether petticoat or trousers, and traffic stood still. Then all was over: the 'plane banked steeply and | shot away. For some little time after she had disappeared, it was hard to convince those who had neither seen or heard it that the Southern Cross had really passed overhead. People flatly refused to have "their legs pulled." But very soon the whole city was talking of it: those who had actually seen the arrival answered question after question and retold their tale many times, the tale losing nothing in circumstantial detail and vividness by repetition. Broadcasted announcements corroborated the stories and gave official details, and crowds surged round the, window of the "Evening Post," eager to read of the safe landing at Christchurch. The dramatic suddennness of the triumphant conclusion of the first trans-Tas-man flight really Btirred the city this morning, and lack of concentration in office or factory has been excused. The flight and nothing but the flight has been and still is the one topic of conversation, and there are already rival claimants to the honour of being the first Wellingtonian to sight the 'plane.