25th Birthday
p. 126 · Read in the full issue
Adastra too, has 25th Birthday
ALONG with PIM, a 25th anni versary is being celebrated this year by an aviation company which has close ties with the Islands. This is Adastra Airways Pty. Ltd., of Mascot, Sydney, a company headed by Mr. H. T. (“Bunny”) Hammond.
Adastra was founded In 1930 by Mr. Hammond and the late Mr.
Frank Follett. They established an aviation school and a passenger service from Mascot to Bega, NSW, then when the Depression came, Mr.
Hammond went north to New Guinea to work as a pilot with Holden Air Transport and help keep the pot boiling financially while Frank Follett carried on alone as the active partner operating Adastra.
In 1935, the company took up aerial photographic survey work and has since then become the lead ing aerial survey organisation in this part of the world, with a staff of 60.
Mr. Hammond served with the; RAAF during the war but Adastraj continued operations, mainly in military-mapping work in Aus-; tralia.
In 1953, Adastra commenced a very big job, which may take years to complete, for the Federal Gov-I ernment in New Guinea. They have also done special mapping jobs for Papuan Aipinaipi and APC there,] and this June they despatched an aircraft to Woodlark Island to make a magnetic geophysical survey for Broken Hill Proprietary, which is interested in iron deposits there.
Adastra appeared in Fiji also, in 1954, to complete a Government job which had been commenced the previous year by Hunting Airways of England. Late last year, these two companies amalgamated to form a subsidiary, Adastra Hunting; Geophysics Pty. Ltd., which handles] the magnetic survey side of opera tions. It is this subsidiary which is operating at Woodlark, and thati aircraft will later go to Horn Island and the Gulf of Carpentaria.
The work being carried out by : Adastra in New Guinea is of great importance to the development of that Territory, reducing by years the old and painfully slow ground-1 survey methods, t The new discharged patients] hostel built by the Fiji Lepers’
Trust Board at Korovou, Suva, was opened by the Acting Governor (MrJ A. F. R. Stoddart) on June 3. Funds] for the modern, concrete building! came from a generous allocation? made by the New Zealand Lepersj Trust Board. The chairman of the; Fiji board (Sir Henry Scott) handed the building over to the Director of Medical Services.