PURPOSEFUL GIRL

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 152, 30 June 1938, Page 19

PURPOSEFUL GIRL

A FLYING CAREER WILL TO WIN THROUGH (From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, June 17. A young Sydney airwoman, Barbara Hitchins, is about to complete a flight from New Guinea, during which she has had many adventures. . She left here in January, made the journey successfully, and then, during a flight over the interior, crashed in the jungle. The story of her privations for four days among uncivilised natives has already been told, but her adventures did not end there. It was at the Wau goldflelds aerodrome that Miss Hitchins met with a mishap which delayed her return to Sydney for several months. She was, testing her D.H. Moth aeroplane, which had just been repaired after the crash in the jungle, when, through the oversight -of a mechanic, her right hand was broken by the propeller. The whirring blade caught the back of her hand, breaking the bones and stripping the flesh to the bone. Her right index finger is still useless. She had to postpone her return flight until the injury had healed, and even now faces another operation to have the bones reset. She made a hazardous crossing of the Coral Sea from New Guinea to Cape York. Suffering agony from her injured hand, with which she had to pump petrol, she crossed the 10,000 ft mountains of New Guinea, flew up the 100-miles-wide estuary of the • Fly River,, came down among natives on a mud-flat in the middle of the sea, and reached Cape York with only half an hour's petrol left. "The plane was just moving—that's all," she said of her ocean crossing, "and the visibility was generally nil, and at the most 300 yards. Below me I could see only a dense haze. It was very bumpy, and my hand was troubling me. My index finger was useless and stiff. I did not think of the water, or of sharks, or such things—at such times your mind is fully occupied with the business in hand. What did concern me was whether I should have allowed more for drift. Cape York is not very big and I knew that if I miscalculated I could easily miss it. And I was concerned when, with only half an hour's petrol left, I could see no sign of the shore. • I had been flying eight and a half hours. I breathed a great sigh of relief when the land suddenly came at me out of the mist less than a quarter Of a mile ahead." ADVENTURES CONTINUE. Her adventures continued as she flew down the • Queensland coast to Brisbane. She had to make a forced landing short of her objective and narrowly averted disaster. ■ "I didn't like it at all," she sr : d, "but I had no alternative. My wrist was sore, and, being unable to reach Brisbane before darkness, I altered my course and landed in a field amidst grass two feet high, hiding broken tree stumps and logs. The plane stopped within six feet of the edge of a 40ft creek embankment, at the side of the field. The take-off the following morning she described as one o£ the most ter-

rifying experiences of her whole trip. "It was pouring rain, my goggles were clouded, and a strong wind was blowing," she said. "The field was strewn with stumps and logs hidden in the long grass, and in the centre of the 300yard runway, was a hugh jump hurdle. I just managed to clear the hurdle and then had to bank steeply to save the plane from crashing into some tall timber on the side of a hill directly in front of me." ' '

These air meanderings are in preparation for a long flight Miss Hitchins intends to undertake in 1940. "I am only crawling before I can walk, in my present plane, although it is a fine bus,' ! she said. "I will get something faster, better powered, biggfer, and with a longer range, and then in 1940 I intend to tackle something worth while. I have seen a good deal cf Australia, and after I have been through the Southern Hemisphere, I am going to see the Northern. People think I am just gadding about, but I have definite plans, and nothing I do in the way of flying is just for notoriety." Miss Hitchins has mapped out her whole life, and is determined to fulfil all her ambitions. "When you are determined to do anything you can always succeed," she said. "I have done many things which I thought were impossible, since I left here last January. I went to New Guinea for a purpose, and I have accomplished that purpose at the expense of a broken hand." VEGETABLE IVORY BUTTONS FROM NUTS <From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, June 8. The imposition of a tariff on foreign buttons gave a big fillip to the button industry of the Mother Country but it is not very likely that many people know that fashionable buttons are often produced from a variety of nut. Vegetable Ivory as a substitute for elephant ivory is the subject of'a short article in the June issue of the "Port of London Authority Monthly." "Real ivory would be an ideal medium for the manufacture of the useful button if the cost of the raw material were not out of all proportion to the value of the finished article. Button makers have turned to good account the peculiar qualities of the palm nut; It has all the appearance of ivory without its attractive grain. The nuts, imported under the general heading of Corozo nuts, are natives of tropical South America and other palmgrowing centres. The complete fruit grows to the size of a man's head and contains six to seven drupes, each in turn containing six to nine seeds resembling Brazil nuts. It is these nuts which are worked by intricate machinery and made into buttons. "One factory, in Birmingham, receives one thousand tons of nuts by canal through the Port of London each year. Some are imported from the Sudan and West Africa, and 60 to 70 tons weekly arrive by the Royal Mail liners from Ecuador." A firm in South London has an annual output of over 1,500,000 gross of medium-priced and cheap vegetable! [Ivory buttons,