Chance Rescue

How Girl Flier Was Found Near Madang.

Prom Our Own Correspondent.

WAU, Mar. 2.

Miss Barbara Hitchins, The

young Sydney girl flier who was lost for several days recently after her plane had made a forced landing, said she had almost given up hope when Pilot Jack Todd, of Stephens Aviation Co., landed beside her, 60 miles south west of Madang. She was on a flight from Kerema (Papua) to Wau (New Guinea).

Her finding was entirely an accident.

Pilot Todd was looking for another machine which was overdue in that dis trict when he spotted her Gypsy Moth on a grassy flat. He landed and, leav ing his passenger in charge of the plane, flew Miss Hitchins to Madang.

Meanwhile, searchers were combing an area more than 100 miles away.

Ray Parer spent five hours in a Moth plane searching the Kerema-Wau route.

Mandated Airlines’ Dragon Rapide, with a party of N.G. Administration officials, including District Officer Penglase, Dr.

Sinclair, and Mr. Collopy (Civil Aviation Department), flew over Lake Kamu and the surrounding rivers. Papua Oil Development’s Grumman amphibian and several of Guinea Airways’ planes also took part in the search.

Miss Hitchins explained that she at tempted to fly around the mountain range on the Papuan-New Guinea border, instead of over it. She took the wrong direction and, in order to conserve her fuel, decided to land. The machine came down in heavy grass country near Mount Wilhelm.

She stayed the night in a native village, and the following morning burnt a 300 yards runway. Attempting to take-off, the wheels of her machine be came tangled in the long grass and it turned over on its back, breaking the propeller. Climbing 1,000 feet to the top of the mountain, she lit signal fires, but the searching planes flew overhead with out seeing her.

Miss Hitchins is anxious to get into the air again. She proposes to fly from Wau to Rabaul, and then back to Aus tralia.

Rev. G. S. Crouch, 8.A., was Fiji’s rep resentative at the Methodist Mission’s Annual Meeting in Sydney, in February.