“ANY WORD OF JEAN?”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 246, 17 October 1936, Page 8

“ANY WORD OF JEAN?”

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION MUCH INTEREST IN FLIGHT Public interest in Miss Je*n Batten’s flight from Sydney to Auckland yesterday was very keen. People in all walks of life diligently sought an answer to the question, “Any word of Jean?” Towards the appointed hour of her arrival over the coast of New Zealand the Avenue in Wanganui was thickly populated about the “Chronicle” office, those waiting for word keenly scanning the windows. Shortly after the hour a notice informing the public that Miss Batten had passed over New Plymouth at 4.2 p.m., New Zealand time, thereby making a record journey from coast to coast, was greeted with cheers. John Citizen, mingling with the crowd, wondered what he would have done had it been his daughter who telephoned him from Syaney and calmly announced that she intended to “hop over, if the weather was line.” Addressing his thought to that aspect of the excitement John could appreciate to the full how heartening the news received at Wanganui of Jean’s arrival over New Plymouth must have been to the father waiting in Auckland. It stirred John’s imagination that thought. In actual hours and minutes Jean’s hop over was easy, but . . . “She’s game,” the man next to John declared. “She can have it for mine. I’m sticking to bowls.” John had vivid recollections of Miss Batten’s brief visit to Wanganui j some time ago. She landed calmly at ' the Airport, alighted, and stepped out of her ’plane with a black c ..t in her I arms. It was all so easy, so matter-of-fact. And to think that she had flown all the way from England, over the accepted flying route, found Australia, made a brief stop and then pushed on for New Zealand to pick up the top of Mt. Egmont almost to the minute. “Shows the progress we’re making in aviation,” John mused. He liked to feel that he was was part and parcel of the progress and liked those who were closer in touch with aviation to know that he knew they were doing a good job of work. “She’s game and she can have it for me. . . ” Those were the words the man standing by John had used. They reflected public thought. “He might have added,” John told himself, “that Jean has become part of the progress aviation is making, a sort of pioneer.” And pioneers, he reflected, had wills of their own, a sort of glorious independence, fashioning their lives and creating history without much fuss themselves. The fuss was made for them by other people. r lrue, a flight like Jean’s was spectacular, but that did not rob it of its pioneering value. “I simply couldn’t live through the hours of waiting if it was a daughter of mine,” Mr. John declared. “You would if you were a pioneer,” John answered. “Pioneer or not, I couldn’t have stood the waiting and you would have had to put your foot down and stop the flight.” It was refreshing, certainly, to be told that one could put one’s foot down, but actually putting it down was another matter. Daughters of to-day have a habit of pleasing themselves,” John said as he went to tend the improving sweet peas and father them away from the October gales. “Good luck to Jean!’”