ARRIVES AT WELLINGTON

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 83, 31 December 1937, Page 5

ARRIVES AT WELLINGTON

-Pren Asiocl&tion.)

Enthusiastic Reception ?

(By Telegraph-

WELLINGTON, This Day. , The Centaurus arrived ovey Welllqgton at 9.55 made a wide sweep over Island Bay and Lyall Bay, and after circling over the city came down to the water off Aotea Quay at 10 o'clock precisely. It was a graceful advent, met with the syrens of the shipping about the wharves and city hooters and enthusiastic waving and cheers of crowds. It was a lovely summer morning, with heat haze high in the sky. The sun was blazing down, and a light northerly was hardly noticeable, except on the heights. Every vantage point on the roofs of city buildings was occupied, end the signifiqance of the pccasion was not lost on the people of Wellington, and the boat herself could hardly have had a more auspicious day to enable Imperial Airways to make their bow tq the capital of the Dominion. „ • The flying-boat made a perfect landjng. The crowd down at Aotea Quay waa silent as the boat, swaying slightly* at under 200 feet, banked for the last' swoop. Power lines and poles, "foreshortened by the angle, appeared likely, to rip the hull, but the boat .dropped gently before flattening out after a double circle of the city. A variety of power craft and row boats bounced in the jobble caused by the churning wake of the flying-boat as she pieked up her moorings near the floating- dock, ' and thousands lining Aotea Quay had a grandstand view. Steamers, trains and motor-ears used whatever means of signalling they had, but the crowd, busy drinking in the spectacle, forgofc to applaud until the actual landing, and then it was restrained clapping. When the ship was safely moored a few minutes after 10 o'clock Captain Burgess and the crew were taken to the dock, then to a reception by the Wellington Harbour Board, and at nooa there was a civie reception. At 5 o'clock this morning, when the guests were called out of bed at Auckland, the sky was grey and the wind f resh, but no more, and at 7 o 'cloek to the second the outer port motor was started up, then the outer motor on the other wing, and the boat was jockeyed into the wind and past the mooring buoy. The early morning car ferry running from Devonport steametf across, and the Centaurus was swung in a wide cirele, Jhen taxied well up' the harbour and turne.d into the wind for the take-off. Somewhere out at sea approaching Auckland was the Mataroa, with Mrs^ Burgess and child on board, and a wide cirele was made out to sea in gaining height, but the Mataroa was under a grey mist and the salute which Capt. Burgess would have paid was deferred till Mrs. Burgess and her child arrivo in Wellington by air this afternoon.