Pioneer Ng Pilots

To Be Honoured

Prom a New Guinea Correspondent

Eight pioneer airmen of

pua-NG are to have their nes perpetuated in the streets Lae.

RE-WAR pilots Parer, Doyle, Ferguson, Trist, Drayton, :hanan, Chater and Gurney, all d now, are to have streets in the idy-christened Bulae and Buanga as named after them, according to recommendation by Lae’s Town

visory Council.

Uthough first names are not men led, it is assumed the Parer pilot Kevin whose Dragon Rapide was ght on the ground at Salamaua by Japanese. Parer was about to e off when machine-gunned. Ray er is still alive. 301. Ferguson, who was buried at amaua, was an early W. R. Carpen- Ltd. pilot whose Fox Moth made ular cargo flights between Sala ua and Wau. On his last flight guson crashed near Bitoi Gap. _es Trist was a Guinea Airways >t on a flight from Lae into Wau en he crashed. Flying a single lined Junkers, Trist hit a mountain the Buang area and it was nine nths before his body was recovered burial. 7 rank Drayton, another Guinea ways pilot, crashed and died on dng Day, 1932, after taking off m Wau, his plane diving into tie Wau Creek, where it burst into ne. Drayton is buried at the sea I of Ansett-Mal’s steel hangar in Buchanan was, I think, a Stevens’ ■ Services pilot, who was lost in I weather on the Salamaua-Wau Bob Gurney was believed flying in nbers when he was lost in the ral Sea Battle. He was another inea Airways pioneer pilot and s seconded to the RAAF during i war, Eric Chater, who was general man ;r for Guinea Airways, lost his ) tragically on Lae airstrip when walked into a whirling propeller.

I is also buried at Lae.

Five boys from Port Moresby High bool and a schoolmaster, Mr. J.

Imer, walked across the Kokoda ail during their recent school holi ys. One of the boys was a Papuan.