Folds

Cart. Birch

His Wings

Captain Hugh Birch retired as Qantas regional director for the South Pacific on June 30, after a career in aviation which linked the Pacific Islands from Papua New Guinea to Tahiti. As a young, regular fly ing officer in the RAAF he served in World War II in England, the Middle East and PNG. After demobilisation in 1946 he returned to PNG to fly a Catalina flying boat for the W. R. Carpenter Company, Island Airways, based at Madang. The Catalina was a real workhorse, flying charters, regular services and helping the government to set up patrol posts with

supply drops.

Captain Birch joined Qantas in 1948 and was posted to Port Moresby, where he found himself captaining the same Catalina, which Carpenters had sold to Qantas. Qantas operated a network of ser vices, radiating from Port Moresby. Back in Australia in 1950, Captain Birch became a Sandringham flying-boat cap tain. But for a short time he went back to a Catalina to captain a proving flight from Sydney to Tahiti, via Tonga and Aitutaki.

Air New Zealand (or TEAL as it was then

known) later operated a different version this route from Auckland to Laucala Bay, Western Samoa, then Aitutaki and Tahiti. As a Sandringham captain he flew services from Sydney to New Caledonia, tbe ew N ebr 'des and Fiji.

In 1952, Captain Birch ended his career “in the air” with a posting to Singapore as Qantas area manager for SE Asia. He came back to Austalia in 1956, and in 1958 went to San Francisco for four years as

United States Qantas manager. Since his return to Australia he held a number of ex ecutive positions at headquarters, in eluding marketing manager, public affairs manager and, for the last three years, as regional director in the South Pacific. In his retirement he hopes to maintain an in terest in the South Pacific in some way, perhaps in the travel industry or as a representative for organisations connected with the area.

A final chore for Captain Birch (left) as Qantas regional director for the South Pacific was to present this aboriginal bark painting to Mr Bruno Tabuteau, Director of the New Caledonian Tourist Office in Noumea, and Miss Barbara Guemy Australian representative , to mark the opening in Sydney of the new combined offices of the French Government Tourist Office, the Tahiti Tourist Development Board and the New Caledonia Tourist Office.