TENSE MOMENTS ON LONE FLIGHT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19241, 1 December 1930, Page 16

TENSE MOMENTS ON LONE FLIGHT.

MR OSCAR GARDEN TELLS OF A FEW EXPERIENCES,

■Women undertaking long flights should avoid landing at those places where there is a numerous native population, according to Mr Oscar Garden, in an interview on Saturday concerning his England to Australia flight.

Some of the Malayan natives were fairly wild, he said, and the traveller was safer in possession of a pistol. He did not know how a woman would fare in that wild country. The Timor Sea should not be crossed with only a oneengined ’plane, as it was no pleasure trip. 4 Mr Garden did not meet an England Miss Aroha Clifford, of North Canterbur}', who has ambitions of making an aerial trip to Australia. He said that he had heard of her being in England. On his trip to Australia he had difficulty in obtaining suitable food, or any at all, in the places where natives formed the whole population. Consequently he lost a stone and a half in weight in a short time. KingsfordSmith had told him that he had experienced the same difficulty, owing to the unconventional hours at which the}' arrived and departed. Natives Thought Him a God.

There were many tense moments for the young aviator on the long flight. When flying over Mergui he noticed a gang of Burman native coolies working in the open. Risking a hostile reception, he landed. The three or four thousand excited natives surged round the ’plane, but luckily they were not openly hostile. As he passed, each native touched him with the hand. It then dawned on the white man that the natives had never seen an aeroplane before, and that they believed him to be a god descended from the skies. The open space in which he had landed had been an old rubber plantation, with big hollows where the trees had been. His only way of taking off again was to induce the natives to fill in with cinders the hollows for a distance of about fifty yards, to provide a runway. At Akyab, between Calcutta and Rangoon, there were eight New Zealanders out of a total white population of under a score. The Maorilanders were all doing -well and spoke affectionately of their Dominion. Mr Garden met Mrs Victor Bruce in Persia, and again at Calcutta, whence they travelled to Rangoon together. He met Flight Lieutenant Hill at Sourabaya. Difficulty of the Tasman. According to Mr Garden, he was the first airman to land at Koepang (Dutch East Indies), where he took in fuel, and was also the first to visit Wyndham. The worst part of the whole trip was from Wyndham to Alice Springs, the intervening country being hot, bumpy and bad for flying. Batavia, in the Dutch East Indies, was, he thought, the cleanest of the native places on the route. Mr Garden would not state whether he intended flying across the Tasman, but said that the Kia Ora could not do it, as that ’plane had a capacity for only 60 gallons, whereas 100 gallons’ capacity was needed. He would not like to attempt such a flight in a Gipsy Moth.