Sydney-Salamaua Air Service: Tenders for Contract Invited
pp. 8-9 · Read in the full issue
Pacific Islands Monthly, January 22, 1937
Sydney-Salamaua
Air Service
Tenders for Contract Invited /~iN January 16, the Commonwealth Department of Defence invited tenders for the new air-mail service between New Guinea and Sydney. The advertisement was as follows: TENDERS will be received by the Secretary, Contract Board, Department of Defence, Melbourne. until Wednesday, March 31, 1937, for the establishment and maintenance of an Aeroplane Service, weekly in each direction, between:— (a) SYDNEY, New South Wales, and SALAMAUA, New Guinea; or alternatively— (b) SYDNEY, New South Wales, and RABAUL, New Guinea; over the route Sydney-Brisbane-Rockhampton, Townsville - Cairns - Cooktown - Thursday Island (Horn Island)-Wau-Salamaua.
Tenderers may tender for a Sydney-Salamaua or a Sydney-Rabaul service, but a separate tender form is to be completed in respect of each and every offer the Tenderers desire to submit. . Tenders must be submitted on the forms provided for the purpose. These forms, including Conditions of Contract, etc., are obtainable at the office of the Secretary, District Contract Board, Circular Quay West, Sydney.
It is officially announced that the ’planes must be capable of carrying six passengers, mails and freight. They must be multi-engined, have a cruising speed of at least 140 miles per hour, and fuel capacity for a cruising range of 500 miles, against a headwind of 30 m.p.h.
It will be seen that the Commonwealth has stuck to its decision that the ’planes must go to the tip of Cape York, and cross to New Guinea by the shortest route (80 miles). Thence they will fly over many hundreds of miles of useless jungle, in Western and Central Papua, to Wau.
All the aerial traffic between New Guinea and Australia, up to date—and it has been considerable—has taken the other route—Townsville, Port Douglas thence across 450 miles of ocean to the Papuan Coast, Port Moresby and Wau. It seems to be just as safe and practicable a route as that between Darwin and the East Indies, via the Timor Sea. But no ordinary man can understand the working of the bureaucratic mind.
The Commonwealth has decided upon the Thursday Island route, and that is the end of it. Port Moresby—in fact, all the settled and developed part of Papua— is cut out from the direct benefit of the new service. Passengers and mails for Papua, presumably, will go to Wau, and thence will be taken, in a feeder service, southwards across the mountains to Port Moresby.
In view of the controversy in the past about the relative merits of the Lae and Salamaua aerodromes, it is interesting to note that Salamaua is stipulated and not Lae. It is obvious that if Guinea Airways are the successful tenderers for this service, they must use their Lockheed; and the contract says that the machines used must be put down on Salamaua. Bureaucracy rides high in the saddle these days. The Administrator knows very well that G.A. do not wish to risk their £30,000 Lockheed machine on the Salamaua aerodrome.
It will be surprising if the new service includes, at the beginning, the 400 miles stretch between Salamaua and Rabaul, along the practically undeveloped Southern coast of New Britain. It seems more likely that, for obvious economic reasons,