Air-Mails for Papua

and New Guinea

Letter to the Editor.

I BEG space in your esteemed journal to bring to the attention of your readers in Papua and New Guinea a suggestion for the improvement of communications between this country and the mainland of Australia.

Briefly, it is that the mails should be entirely conveyed by a weekly aerial ser vice by way of Thursday Island and Nor manton, Q., and conveyed at the usual rates of postage. The centres in New Guinea for the air mail would be Port Moresby, Samarai, Salamaua, Rabaul.

In December of this year the England- Australia air mail will be inaugurated, and large air-liners will thenceforward be flying weekly to and from Sydney and Darwin, via Brisbane and Cloncurry.

Quantas Ltd. in Queensland maintain, under Commonwealth subsidy, a service between Cloncurry and Normanton. Thus a Commonwealth-subsidized service would be available between Sydney and Nor manton.

The establishment of a seaplane service, carrying mails only, between Normanton and Rabaul, via Port Moresby, Samarai, Salamaua, and Rabaul, would complete the direct aerial route from Sydney. A seaplane service, carrying mails only, could quite regularly maintain, in con

junction with the mainland services, a weekly service from Sydney to Thursday Island and Port Moresby in three days; Samarai and Salamaua in four days (Samarai being served by a feeder line); Rabaul in five days.

Such a service would be commercially feasible if the greater part of the present mail subsidy paid to the steamship line were transferred to the aerial service. The steamship services are quite capable of operating under a reduced mail subsidy, by reason of passenger and freight busi ness, which should not decrease, but rather increase, with improvement in communication service.

The carriage of mail matter entirely by air, at ordinary rates, is certain to become general within a few years. Already, it is being done abroad. For instance, the Egyptian mail goes by Imperial Airways to Europe; the Swedish mail to the Con tinent and the British Isles is carried by air.

The air freight and transport activities of this country are outstanding in the world, and there is no reason why it should not lead, certainly within the British Empire, in the carriage of mails by the fastest means available, and at reasonable cost.

I commend the suggestion to those in terested in the advancement of New Guinea.

I am, etc.,

Geoffrey J. Davey.

Samarai, Papua,