Return of Frigate Bird and Wedding

For Captain Taylor

(See article on page 108)

SEVERAL thousand people were at Rose Bay, Sydney, on April 22, when Captain P. G. Taylor and his crew of the Catalina, Frigate Bird 11, arrived back after a survey flight from Sydney to Valparaiso, Chile.

Captain Taylor had landed at Brisbane the previous day.

The return flight was via Easter Island, French Oceania, Cook Islands, Western Samoa and Suva. Between Man gareva and Tahiti surveys were made of the Tuamotus, many of which would make ideal aircraft bases.

From Aitutaki the flight was made by way of Palmerston to examine lagoon and atoll formations to ascertain their suitability for use by flying boats and planes.

As the flying boat circled the lagoon islanders rushed from palm-roofed huts and endeavoured to wave it down into the lagoon, which is remarkably clear of coral heads.

When the flying boat was in flight the High Commissioner of Western Samoa radioed that ‘‘Quarantine business at Apia recently was the result of confusion in Wellington, which has now been cleared up. I can now authorise your flight entry to Western Samoa without quarantine, which I gladly do.”

It had been reported that if Frigate Bird II landed in Western Samoa her crew would be put in quarantine as it was supposed that Tahiti was having a polio epidemic.

The survey party arrived on Fiji on April 16, where the Catalina was over hauled.

Captain Taylor now has so many of these long ocean flights to his credit that he makes the whole thing look easy, so no one was particularly surprised when he arrived back in Australia, as scheduled.

Many were surprised, however, when he arrived back with a fiancee who had joined the crew in Papeete for the home ward flight. She was Miss Joyce Ken nington, who acted as his agent in Tahiti for the organisation of the most impor tant stages of the flight—from Tahiti to Chile via Easter Island. It is necessary to use the past tense when referring to Captain Taylor’s fiancee—the couple were married on May 5 at St. Mark’s Church, Darling Point, Sydney.

Captain Taylor’s first wife died last year.