Sydney-Rabaul

Airmail

Will Not Commence Until March

forecast was made in our last issue that Governmental unreadiness would cause a delay in the inauguration of the new weekly airmail service be tween Sydney, Papua, and New Guinea.

Since then it has been announced that the service will not commence until March, 1938.

The three De Havilland 4-engined air liners, with which Messrs. W. R. Car penter & Co. Ltd. will carry on the service, will be available in Sydney at the end of the year; but the Common wealth authorities nave not got the ground organisation ready.

It is necessary to make improvements in the aerodromes at Cooktown and Port Moresby, and probably at Wau and Rabaul; and, of course, there must be a complete installation of radio directional finding apparatus, and a meteorological organisation to provide prompt and ac curate weather reports.

The Commonwealth Government knew

all this at the beginning of 1937, when it first invited tenders for the service; but, in the manner so dear to the hearts of bureaucracy, the work has been de layed on one pretext and another until it has become impossible to launch the service on the specified date—namely, January 1.

From announcements made by the Administrator of New Guinea and by the airmail contractors, it is understood that the aeroplanes will leave Sydney every Monday and fly to Townsville; remain at Townsville for the night; fly on Tuesday from Townsville to Cooktown, Port Moresby, Wau, and Salamaua; remain at Salamaua for the night; and on Wednesday morning they will fly from Salamaua to Rabaul.

The return journey will be made imme diately. The aeroplanes will leave Rabaul on Wednesday afternoon and fly to Sala maua; on Thursday they will fly from Salamaua to Townsville and on Friday they will complete the journey from Townsville to Sydney.

There has been some criticism of the position of the Rabaul aerodrome, which is 12 or 14 miles west of Rabaul. It is strongly urged that, if Rabaul is co re ceive the full benefit of the aeroplane service, some provision should be made for a landing-ground nearer the town.

Otherwise, it will not be possible for Rabaul people to receive their airmail and reply to it by the outgoing ’plane, the same afternoon.

There originally was a good deal of criticism of the position chosen for the Rabaul aerodrome, but the Administrator ignored it and went ahead with his plan, in characteristic fashion. He secured a moral victory when the eruption occurred, and ’planes were able to land on the aerodrome, which was just outside of the area affected. But he will have to meet a volume of criticism if the present arrangement continues namely, the ’plane to leave Rabaul shortly after its arrival, while the aerodrome is many miles away from Rabaul, at the end of an indifferent road.

The Federal Government, at the be ginning of October, announced that direc tional radio would be established at Cooktown, Port Moresby and Salamaua.