AOTEA'S VISIT

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 17, 20 January 1940, Page 12

AOTEA'S VISIT

A SUMMER WELCOME

FIRST CALL HERE

CENTENNIAL VISITORS

Riding low over the western hills, her nose tipped by the glare of a summer sun, the Tasman Empire Airways' flying-boat Aotearoa made her first appearance at Wellington at 4.10 yesterday afternoon, and settled to a perfect landing in Evans Bay at 4.18, ten hours eighteen minutes after taking off at Sydney. Head winds all the way from Australia put the time for the seventh crossing of the Tasman by the Aotearoa nearly three hours above her record trip in August last year, and an hour longer than the record of the Centaurus in December, 1937. Yachts, launches, and swimmers under a blazing sky gave the Aotearoa a real summer welcome as soon as she had swirled to her moorings. The delay in arrival—she was expected at 3.35 p.m.—enabled many people to be on the waterfront and hill roads, but to the public generally the arrival was unexpected. Half an hour before the scheduled arrival few cars were drawn up near the Patent Slip, but when the flyingboat appeared a long line of parked vehicles s*naked down from the hills and along the waterfront The main waterfront .curved in a balanced arc, the white wings of competitors in the yachting championships at one end, the official decorated barge at the other, arid between them the dark line of spectators lining the rails on the sea-' wall. A breeze that had freshened since morning set up a glinting jobble on the water, an occasional homewardbound yacht meandered into the Boat Harbour, and the only disturbance in the stillness of anticipation was the spasmodic thudding rattle of a riveter at work at the Patent Slip. FALSE ALARMS. Watchers were handicapped by a restricted horizon. The straddling hump of Mount Victoria reduced vision to the-west almost to zero, and the banked clouds and heat haze of the Hutt Valley could just be glimpsed through the rigging of the Wairuna at the slip. The only long view was to the south beyond Rongotai, and that field was prolific in false alarms. Flags at the Exhibition, distorted by the shimmer ef heat, became, in turn, the Aotearoa, and when a Lockheed from Nelson appeared over the Centennial tower it definitely was the flying-boat. A highwing monoplane, 15,000 feet or more above Mount Victoria and flying out of the sun, was the next choice, and v sent a photographer sprinting to the end of the jetty, muttering because the sun was adhering to its habit of going westwards. • At 3.37 the Harbour Board launch Arahina, which had been in contact with the Aotearoa by. radio-telephone, announced that the flying-boat would not arrive until 4.10, and put out to clear a runway. She turned inshore and took the bay in a wide sweep for the patrol, chivvying the last of the yachting stragglers in and leaving a chunky wash to help them along. Symbolically enough, what the Maori calls Aotearoa had detached itself from the parent cloud-mass and lay across the northern sky—long and cottonwoolly. Unfortunately this welcoming formation seemed to have been working on the original schedule of the flying-boat, and at 4 o'clock it had dispersed. More false alarms—or. hopes—were raised by the intermittent cheering of schoolboys on the beach, but at 412, two minutes after first being sighted from Wellington, the Aotearoa appeared. MAGNIFICENT SIGHT. Flying at 2000 feet above Mount Victoria, she was a magnificent sight. The south-easterly breeze, not more than seven miles an hour, was still sufficient to silence the roar of the fourcngined flying-boat, virtually of the same construction as the Centaurus. Wing-spread as she hummed head-on to Evans Bay was reduced to a hairline punctuated by the four dark cores of the engines, and as the angle witn the sun became more acute, the nosetip flamed against the grey of the body. distance was being annihilated by this latest example of Empire expansion For only a few seconds were eyes blinded by the sun, and then the Aotearoa surged serenely overhead the ZK-AMA on the wings standIn* out sharply. Across the bay she • swooped, caught by the sun as she hanked to follow the hills to the harbour and changed to a dull torpedo as. she angled towards Wellington losing height rapidly. The flying-boat slid from view behind the point to circle the city, and a minute or so later reapepared to Evans Bay, impressiveness increasing as the altitude decreased. , Still the engines were muffled, ana the huge boat seemed unreal in the long curving bank over the Exhibition' Again she followed the hills, camouflaging herself against the white and grey cumulus clouds massed above the ranges. The turn had made visible the red paint on the upper surface of her wings, and showed up the full size- of the massive craft. A PERFECT LANDING. Over Mount Crawford the Aotearoa banked majestically and sloped into the wind for the landing. Then began a race with her shadow that, ended in the inevitable dead-heat. The impression of speed increased as the water was neared, and with a welter and thrash of foam the boat made her first, a perfect, landing in Wellington waters, trailing a wake of furrowed water and swirling spume. The metal-lic-grey tanker Solar, lying at Miramar Wharf, set up a clamour of welcome with her siren, unheard, of course, by the occupants of the Aotearoa. When the Aotearoa, flying the New Zealand Civil Air Ensign, swung sharply to starboard to taxi to her moorings, the water w is whipped into a small maelstrom, and engines gave their full blast. The yachts, which had been chafing at their jetty, swept into.the bay to cluster round the fly-ing-boat, but they were not before half a-dozen or so young swimmers who were at the Aotearoa's mooring buoy almost before the engines had stopped.

The official launch, carrying Captain Lord Dormer, A.D.C., representing the Governor-General, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Nash, and Mrs. Peter Fraser, put out from the wharf at 4.40 p.m., and passengers and complement were brought from the Aotearoa to the official barge at five-minute intervals. Several launches which had been lying in wait took sightseers out to the flying-boat, which, as the crowd dispersed, had settled down in gently.- (

heaving water, sideo dappled with reflections.

Captain Burgess, who landed within sight of his old home, explained the comparatively long passage by head winds all the way from Australia. It had been expected, he said, that westerlies would be met when the New Zealand coast was approached, but the head winds had persisted. The Aotearoa kept at about 8000 feet, met a fair amount of cloud, and some rain-storms/ Landfall was made nt Cape Farewell, and a wonderful view was had of the Marlborough Sounds.