Newspaper Race

’"PHE race between the Sydney news * papers to be first with photographs of the Rabaul eruptions was spectacular.

Sydney Daily Telegraph sent off a Gan

net monoplane, carrying Captain Gatenby

(pilot), Messrs. S. Marshall (co-pilot), Allen Dawes and B. J. Blenden (special correspondents), E. W. Scott (photo grapher, and B. Sullivan (Broadcasting Commission). The plane met very bad weather, but it got through to Port Moresby, Lae and Rabaul eventually, five days after the eruption. The Telegraph also sent its Port Moresby correspondent, Mr. Lewis Lett to Rabaul by H.M.A.S.

Moresby.

A Puss Moth plane (Pilot T. McDonald) left Brisbane with a Brisbane Telegraph correspondent on Monday, May 31, and flew via Thursday Island, Darn and Lae to Rabaul. It met very bad weather both ways, and was reported missing two or three times. Pilot and passenger spent one night in a Fly River village (Western Papua) and another on a beach some where on the south coast of New Britain.

The plane got through, but it was much too small for this type of job, Sydney Morning Herald decided, to rely on Guinea Airways. By freely using the radio service, the Herald got a com plete range of photographs away with Pilot Jack Turner, in the 3-engined Ford plane which returned to Lae after taking the Administrator from Lae to Rabaul.

Mr. Turner, now under Herald charter.

brought the precious photos, to Lae, and thence flew straight south, via Port Moresby, to Townsville. He arrived there at 1,45 p.m. on Saturday, June 5. Within ten minutes Captain P. G. Taylor, also under special charter, who had been wait ing there, also had taken the packet and was en route for Sydney. He landed by flares at Brisbane at 7.45 p.m.

Meanwhile, the Telegraph Gannet, with special photographs, was racing back. It left Rabaul at 4 a.m. on Saturday and reached Cairns at dusk, being then 1,000 miles behind Taylor.

Both machines should have reached Sydney on Sunday, but a fierce cyclone developed. Taylor, leaving Brisbane early, got through by superb airmanship.

Gatenby got to Brisbane about 1 p.m., as the cyclone reached its maximum; and. although he tried again and again, he could not get further south that day.

Thus, the S.M. Herald was the first to publish the remarkable photos, of the eruptions.