By Former NG Pilot

Australia s Air Beef Plan Originated

A RECENT issue of Australian National Airways magazine (Air Travel) tells how Mr. I, N. Grabowsky, once a well-known Guinea Airways pilot in New Guinea, took a prominent part in the formation of Air Beef Ltd.

Air Beef is a company that has been formed to air-freight beef carcases from the Kimberleys and other parts of Aus tralia’s northern cattle country.

Mr. Grabowsky was with G’air in New Guinea in the days when they were flying anything from dredges to lamb chops in from the coast at Lae and Salamaua to the Morobe goldfields.

After his experience of air freighting in the Territory he became convinced that in air transport lay the solution to de veloping the far northern areas of Aus tralia.

He first discussed the idea of slaughter ing cattle inland and flying the carcasses to the nearest port or railhead with the Minister of the Interior in 1936. Two years later he put a detailed plan before Mr. Lyons, then Australian Prime Minister. He was promised that the scheme would be subsidised up to the hilt.

Then war came and a Labour Govern ment which was not interested, and the plans were shelved for years.

In 1946, when Mr. Grabosky was Plan ning and Development manager for ANA, he went to Perth to discuss his plans with the Western Australian Government and with Macßobertson-Miller Aviation Co. These two, with ANA are to-day in terested in Air Beef Ltd.

Last year the company went into opera tion but this was regarded as purely ex perimental. Confident now of success, Air Beef will, in 1950, proceed on a much larger scale. If 5,000 head of cattle can be slaughtered in the Kimberleys and air transported it will mean about 500,000 additional pounds of meat for export.