NETHERLANDS FLAG

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 141, 11 December 1935, Page 19

NETHERLANDS FLAG

ELOWN ACROSS TASMAN

AN AUCKLAND PROPOSAL

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, December 10.

Trophies of two great achievements separated by three centuries in the history of New Zealand are likely to be set side by side when the Netherlands flag, flown across the Tasman Sea by Mr. W. M. O'Hara, the Dominion airman, is presented to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. Her Majesty is said to possess the original flag of Abel Tasman, the great Dutch navigator, who discovered New Zealand. The flag carried by Mr. O'Hara in his Klemm monoplane was sent by the Consular-General for the Netherlands in Sydney on behalf of the Dutch community there to Captain Bauer, consul in Auckland.

The suggestion that it might be appropriate to present the trophy to Queen Wilhelmina was made to Mr. O'Hara by the Auckland Returned Soldiers' Association, and it was pointed out in a letter to Mr. O'Hara that he had brought the first Netherlands flag across the Tasman by air. The suggestion was brought by Mr. O'Hara under the notice of Captain Bauer; to whom the flag had been handed, and he agreed to make it available.

Plans made by Mr. O'Hara to return from the Dominion to Australia by air have been abandoned at the request of his mother. Mr. O'Hara explained that although his mother was gratified at the success of his recent flight she was anxious that he should not undertake the return journey by air. He would therefore ship his monoplane to Sydney at the end of his New Zealand visit, and fly from there to his home at Malang, Java. A tour of New Zealand by air is planned by Mr. O'Hara, and he hopes to begin before Christmas.