CARS REPLACE CAMELS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 836, 3 December 1929, Page 10

CARS REPLACE CAMELS

DESERT MAIL SERVICE

ESCORT OF ARMED MOTORS A few years ago camel caravans plodded wearily across the arid stretches of desert between Beirut, Damascus, and Baghdad. Today that long journey of dusty miles is done in luxuriously appointed motor-cars belonging to a company organised and controlled by two young New Zealanders, Messrs. Norman and Gerald Nairn. Yesterday afternoon Mr. Norman Nairn arrived in Auckland by the Niagara and told something of the wonderful service be and his brother have organised in the wastes of the Syrian and Arabian deserts. His only object in returning to New Zealand, which he left in 191 G, is to see his mother in Wellington and to visit his friends in Blenheim, his birthplace. Periodically the adventures of the Nairn brothers have figured in the cable news as their service-cars have been held up frequently by bands of maurauding Arabs and Bedouins. On one occasion Mr. Nairn had 22 bullet holes through his car. Life is full of adventure for these two enterprising New Zealanders, ■lust recently the disturbances in Palestine interfered with tile desert transport, but when Mr. Nairn left for New Zealand the trouble had more or less died down. Even today, however, the cars have to he escorted by armed patrols of fast motor-cars fitted with machineguns. Through French territory French patrols are employed, and English patrols through English territory. Mr. Nairn’s story of how the desert transport was organised reads like a romance. He left New Zealand early In 191 G and joined the Flying Corps in England, later serving in Salonika. From there he was transferred to the Mechanical Transport Workshops and later went to Palestine to serve with the 21st Corps Headquarters. Mr.. Nairn was one of Lord Allenby’s troops to go to Beirut, on tlie Syrian coast of tlie Mediterranean Sea. Wben peace was declared be decided to stay there and until 1922 be was in business importing motor-cars. Then be decided to organise the motor route across the desert to Baghdad, which at that time was served by camel caravans. “I first got the idea of starting the service when 1 w-as asked to arrange motor-cars to take a political mission to Baghdad from Syria,” said Mr. Nairn yesterday. ‘‘We got an Arab sheik, Mohamet Ibn Bassan, to conduct the party and to ward off maurauders. On arrival at Baghdad the Postmaster-General asked me if I would start a mail service across the desert, as the mails took so long to reach Baghdad from London. We have now reduced the time from 28 days to nine.” The Arab shiek, Bassan, was paid £2,000 a year as security that the cars crossing the desert would not be molested by wandering bands of marauders. Formerly the camel caravans took 11 days to cross the desert from Beirut to Bagdad. Now the Nairn cars speed their passengers across in 24 hours if all goes well. When Mr. Nairn returns he hopes to organise an air service across the desert, and he is considering the purchase of three 12passenger planes. With these planes he hopes to do the journey from Beirut to Bagdad in four and a-half hours.

The desert makes an ideal landing ground, he says, because it is so fiat, and if a plane is forced down it can easily rise again.