Tahiti's Isolation Is
p. 27 · Read in the full issue
Ended
TEA Establishes Fortnightly Service
IT was officially announced on M!ay 18 that Tasman Empire Airways, which provides the two Trans-Tasman ser vices (Sydney-Auckland, Christchurch- Melbourne), will inaugurate, at an early date, a fortnightly service between Sydney and Tahiti.
TEA already operates a regular ser vice between Auckland and Suva. Fiji.
The new schedule represents an extension of that Auckland-Suva service via W.
Samoa and Cook Islands, to Papeete, in Tahiti.
Tahiti, for years, has been “out on the end of a limb.” All the other South Pacific Territories now are linked up with world airways by good air services based mostly on Australia or New Zealand; but French Oceania and New Caledonia were more or less reserved for French air in terests. Air France did its best, but soon iiscovered that these French Pacific colonies are too distant from other sec tions of the French Empire to make a profitable Trans-Pacific service possible.
Qantas and TEA (the two big airways companies providing local Pacific services :rom Australia and New Zealand respec tively) each examined the Tahiti situa tion. At first the French authorities were lot enthusiastic: but, as it became clear that Air France was not coming in, and is the absence of air connections was causing embarrassment and loss to Tahiti business, the official attitude changed.
TEA. which gives admirable service vith the best aircraft available, will be
welcomed in Tahiti —and, in fact, in all the Islands groups of Polynesia.
Already, TEA has four Solent flying boats —which are about the roomiest and most comfortable craft of their type in the world —and the chairman (Sir Leonard Isitt) announces that a fifth has been ordered.
After this month, passengers and mails, making use of services already estab lished, plus the extension from Fiji, will travel every fortnight between Auck land and Papeete, via Auckland, Suva (Fiji), Apia (Western Samoa) and Aitu taki (Cook Islands).
Mrs. J. R. Gwilt, of the Mt. Lamington area, Papua, who with her husband was one of the few survivors of the eruption of January 21, arrived in Sydney on holi day in May. She said that their rubber plantation, although only six miles from the volcano, was not in the direct path of the blast.
The number of Government-licenced traders and dealers in New Caledonia is 2.944, of whom 1,229 operate in Noumea.
Of these, 1929 are French, 592 native Melanesian, 257 Indo-Chinese, 85 Javanese, and 81 “foreign” (including Australian).