DIFFICULT COUNTRY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 14, 17 July 1939, Page 11

DIFFICULT COUNTRY

LANDINGS AT MANAROA

The Marlborough Sounds are bad coimtry for aerodromes and landing fields, for in the 1200 square miles of hill lands and on the shores of the hundreds of inlets and bays there are not half a dozen flats where even a light plane can land with an assurance of getting off again, though two of those few natural flats, Manaroa and Eli Bay (smaller inlets in the main Craill Bay, Pelorus Sound), are within twelve miles of Tia Ora, where the forced landing was made, and a third possibility, Waitaria Bay, is another five miles further, over a 2000----foot razor-back. From Tia Ora . the plane will presumably be taken across the sound and into Craill Bay by barge, for there is no feasible way by land.

That Manaroa is possible of development as an emergency landing "field, even as a recognised ground for the Sounds area, was demonstrated, five or six years ago, when Captain George Bolt, then engineer-instructor to the Wellington Aero Club, and Mr. A. W. Nisbet, then secretary of the club, took a Moth across the Strait and made a series of landings at Manaroa. Since then occasional landings with passengers have been made there, upon a narrow field, naturally reasonably surfaced, and, though a oneway runway, facing up and down the prevailing winds. The aerodrome branch of the Public Works Department has considered that and other possibilities, but has not proceeded with an emergency field for this much flown-over Sounds country, of high and broken hills, razor back ridges, and the maze of bays and inlets.