Miss Amy Johnson.

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 11, 12 July 1930, Page 28

Miss Amy Johnson.

The departure of Miss Aruy Johnson from Western Australia this week on her homeward route —this time by boat instead of aeroplane—was the occasion for a great farewell ia Perth. While in Australia she was interviewed on many occasions, tho _ "T asmania.n

Mail" recently publishing a most interesting record of her experiences. "My plans are quite indefinite," she told the interviewer. "I. expect to be home soon, ■ but who knows? Had I made Darwin in record time I would probably have turned again and tried to create a new record in the flight back homebut that's all over. The route from England.to Karachi has been well pioneered by Imperial Airways and is wonderfully organised. I can't quite visualise the London to Sydney service in full working order all the year round. In the first place there's the trouble with monsoons. They arenH to be overcome by any time table. They don't stay in one place, either, but move about, and so they are blowing somewhere or other for nearly sis months of the year. But the E.A.AJ1. cruises have done much research, and still more is being done every day so that in the end science may beat the weather. But at present it hasn't done so. Further I cannot prophesy. Plying is very fashionable in England now, and you can see dozens of women arriving at the aerodromes dressed to kill. They'll never fly in this world. I care not a jot about the fashions, my grubby old breeches are good enough for me, I love them, and I do think that at Stag Lane we take our flying very seriously. I've had good friends all the way. The Dutch were charming, their air organisation beyond praise, and but for their bad weather I should^have loved the trip across "Java. One gets the most beautiful glimpses of places from the air. Sydney I shall never forget. It loomed beautiful —unforgettable. Here the fog obscured my view, but I should say Melbourne was essentially a city to be seen from the earth; its spaciousness is best appreciated by the foot passenger." Her north country accent is slight but unmistakable. Her colour is fresh with a covering of tan. Tho tiny lines the weather brings are round her eyes and mouth, and the hands are very thin.. Curiously enough she is the double of a woman solicitor of Sydney—even to the wave in her hair. If she were not from Hull she might be from any part of Australia or New Zealand. Tho very slightness of her figure, the quick movements, tho sudden smile, the slight .tendency to impatience over women's foibles— "dressed to kill,'.''she said with-heaps of contempt in her . voice—arc all characteristics of a - typo wo see every day, particularly in the country. A "downright" woman, sho might well be called, not a reckless one, but a woman'who, born to a life of rather less activity than she wanted, sought" an outlet in stern endeavour.