AUSTRALIAN CABLE

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 10722, 24 December 1927, Page 6

AUSTRALIAN CABLE

FLIGHT TO NEW ZEALAND

(Received 11.10 a.m.) _ Electric telegraph —Frees Association SYDNEY, Tins Day. The Premier, Mr Bavin, intends spending several weeks holiday at his birth place. New Zealand, commencing in the middle of January. Trouble is again looming on the waterfront a»s the result of a decision of the Australian Seamen's Lmon to hold a stop work meeting on «<?«- nesday morning next. Under their award seamen are given the right- to hold a stop-work meeting on the last Tuesday of every month and because next Tuesday is a holiday the seamen asked the owners permission to hold a meeting next "Wednesday. It is understood. however, that the owners refused the applications. In© seamen thereupon deckled to take matters in their own hands by holding a meeting. . The city is thronged With Christmas visitors. Fine weather is predicted Tiie shops last night were thronged to almost the suffocation point. There has been -a large exodus ol city people to the seaside and country resorts. . ~, . _ MELBOURNE. This Day The monoplane in which the flight to New Zealand is to bo made is 'bejiio- assembled at Point Cook Aerodrome a-nd is expected to lx? ready for the trial on Wednesday. Later it will flv to the Richmond Aerodrome, Sydney. Probably on the day of the great flight it will fly to the Mascot Aerodrome on the coast where- petrol will ho taken aboard. The airniie-ii intend to- land at Wellington but choice depends 041 weather conditions. Hie machine carries three hundred gallons of petrol, en■'bliwr it to be flown sixteen or seventeen hundred miles. The Federal Government is extending every courtesy to the New Zealand airmen. Ihe flight will -ossibly start on New Year's night. The time selected will coincide with the presence of four sfearners, spaced at fairly regular Intel vals between Australia ami Now Zealand. The New Zealand Government has arranged for the New Zealand naval squadron to be exereiseng on tlie coast at that time. The monoplane is named Aotearoa CANBERRA Ibis Day. No information lias 'been received h.- the Minister of Home Territories. Mr Marr regarding the mysterious aeroplanes in West Australia, cabled vesterdav. The Comptroller General of. Custom/, stated lie did not regard it as a serious .suggestion that the aeroplanes were engaged in smugglin<r opium. He pointed out that the necessity of having a mother ship <«’. at least six thousand tons on the coast would make the cost, prohibitive while cn aeroplane between Broome and the islands of East Indies seemed equally impracticable.