Ray Parer To "Go South Finish"

Ray Parer, formerly one of Australia’s famous pioneer airmen, completes his job as an APC ship commander in the Gulf of Papua in November, and then “goes South finish”.

Mr. Parer has been a long time in the Territory—it is more than 30 years since he set down the first “crate” on Ela Beach, Port Moresby (see photograph), and then carried on an adventurous air freighting service in the goldfields areas until World War II He claims he was the first man to take a plane off the ground in New Guinea. Sir Ray (then Dr.) Cilento cleared a strip near Rabaul in 1928, and Ray Parer flew a plane off it. This combination of Rays means that Parer was actually in the air over Rabaul five days before Pard Mustar made his famous first flight from Rabaul to Lae Mr. Parer married Mrs. Ellie Jones about 1938, but they were divorced soon afterwards; and then he married (in 1946) his cousin, Miss Pat Ross. She lives now in Lae; and they have a son, Michael, at school in Queensland.