A FLYING TRIP

Hokitika Guardian, 18 September 1937, Page 6

A FLYING TRIP

ENGLAND TO SYDNEY. AN INTERESTING DESCRIPTION. About 50 year s ago a relative ol mine sailed for Austialia from England. He got there six months later, ana thought he was a hero to have survived the short rations, cramped quarters, and many hazards of wind alia weather.

Last week I reached Sydney in 12 days after hopping off from Southampton in one of Imperial Airways’ luxun flying-boats. It was called the Corsair.

But there was nothing about any of its passengers to justify that rol licking adventurous name. From ou smartly uniformed captain-pilot, veteran of 2000 flying-hours, to our youngest passenger, a bespectacled chemist, so fresh from the University that lie still sported its cricket blazer, we looked a prosaic crowd, fussing about our seats and, bags like travellers on suburban trains.

When we left the water there was that over-done air of casualness whi;h betrays uneasiness.

For myself. I freely confess I have never yet started on a new air journey without a faint feeling that perhaps, after all, the ground was man’s natural habitat.

But we all managed to look slight ly superior, and so quelled each ether. Lunch came along, smooth and efficiently served, but even the passing of the salt to each other in mid-air failed to break' down the barriers.

Shortly afterwards, the captain came back for a smoke. This eased the ten sioii, aiid by the time we glided down to Marseilles harbour, we knew each other’s names and occupations.

We were five British army officers, a District Commissioner in India, a shipping agent, a schoolmaster in the Sou dan, a journalist, and four ethers bound for the iPersiau Gulf oil-fields. These were an oil-refiner, the young chemist, an acetyleiie welder, and a diver. Tin latter two were Americans.

When we hopped off for Rome w, had lost our air-consciousness.

The American diver, being completely unaware of the nicer distinctions oi English convention, broke down tin last vestiges of reserve and kept us together in the smoking cabin listening to his stories of life on' the floor o the seven seas.

Here we were four thousand fee above the Mediterranean, so thrilled with adventure oii the ocean-bed that we hardly looked down on the delis, bush that covers the northern end oi Corsica, Napoleon’s biithpla e and still the land of romantic adventurers. This diver was no braggart. Hairbreadth escapes are the ordinary incidents of his occupation. He had a chihl-like belief in fate Fights with giant fish, the sudden shifting of a sunken wreck that trapped him for half-an-hour, the fouling of his air-line, jamming of valves that resulted in his suit blowing out like a balloon and shooting him to the top were all in his day’s work. The' only serious injury he ever re eeived was in a motor smash caused by some home-brewed beer exploding in the back of his car during prohibition days.

"It only goes to show,” he said, •‘that you can’t figger out risks.” So, before we knew it, we had arrived at Lake Riacciauo, bathed in- the gold of the setting sun. Our first day’s flight was over. We piled into a motorbus for a twenty miles drive to Rome.

We had come from Southampton at an average speed of 145 m.p.li. Ihe motorbus shook and rattled, back-fire.i and spluttered,, and got flat out to such a terrifying 20 m.p.li. that wt reached the hotel feeling we were indeed a band of heroes.

At Alexandria we said good-bye to the flying-boat, two of the army officers. the shipping agent, and the schoolmaster, and in a dawn that justified the most highly coloured parlour chromotint, we took the air in a lane machine of the Hannibal class to traverse the Delta of the Nile, Palestine, and the Arabian Desert.

Camel trains and berobed Arabs, seen from the air, hinted romance, but this is belied by the arid land, which brought forth the wise-crack, from one of the officers, that the only reason he could see for fighting in Palestine was against having to live there. Jerusalem, from the distance, "'as unexciting, but the Dead Sea, over which wo flew, lias that eerie air of desolation seldom experienced outside the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. So we came to Bagdad, the city of the Caliphs. Our piano excited no interest among a population that lives half in the pages of the Arabian Nights and half in the modern world.

The night before we arrived the heads of the army and the air force had been shot, and the atmosphere was tense. The manager of the cafe hinted darkly to us that the shootings were not yet over ... Next day we shed our oil-men and another officer, with a regret fully shared with them. On their part, I suspect, the regret was not so much at losing us as at finding Barheim. That ni"ht we spent in a desert fort, so much like a P.C. Wren story, that I was tempted to believe we were living on a Hollywood set. This "'as called Sharjah. It may not be the hottest place in the world, but they told me it would be 120 degrees in the shade—it there was any shade. Even at night the place seemed to shimmer in the boat. We could not sleep. So we sat out in the courtyard

i ana Jisteneu, to tales or tne ranir or !• [pi from our’remaiiiing officer,-Avhb.'JiJid collected one of the Fakir’s/ b.uiyetsau - the shoulder last February’ alidwfts/go- - mg back for more. ' /// After Delhi, the only .remaining through travellers were myself of nd\ a Victorian squatter, who ha’d joined/us - at Rome. We now became a soft of ; hierarchy td whom casual passengers ; for one of two hops ought dtfdbe/Fc- > spectful. ‘ ' > Across, the Malay Peninsula we got our greatest thrill. Flying at ;I§,ooo feet, through dense clouds,, we sudden. ■ ly looked down on the most brilliant 1 rainbow I have ever seen.' 1 Rangoon, so beautifully green; and 1 fresh that it is called the Ireland.; of the East, Bankok, with' its cocoanut grbves.' Peii'arig that seemfed to be 4 an . island of gardens, passed swiftly,- and '.ve were in Singapore, \yher© East and , West live : in perfect amity./ A/" At its £1,000,000. airport, . Europe’s best aerodromes in the shade, t we picked up the Quantas plane, and from then on our journey Ausi tralian flavour, with a homely air of ) casual efficiency about everything.. ' : And so to Darwin and Mascot—- - twelve days out from London.' 1 . .' > Within a few months my 12-day joiir- ) nev wiil have passed, like my relative’s - six months’ voyage, into histofy. • London will be only seven days aivtijy and - both the Victorian and 1 will be in.teft estiiig survivals, along with the'd’ays i j of-tll'e bullock train.'