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Hokitika Guardian, 12 August 1931, Page 4

The public has not yet grown tired of acclaiming new heroes of the air, and Mr J. A. Mollison has received the warmest welcome in England, on the completion of a record-breaking flight fjrom Australia. His flight was in every way a wonderful triumph, and the young Australian deserves all the praise that has been bestowed on his competence as an airman, his skill as a navigator, and the resolution which marked his perforfnance. The fact that he reached Croydon “sunburnt and weary, with bloodshot eyes,” his one desire being for sleep, as he had averaged only two' hours’ rest daily throughout the flight, is in itself sufficient to deter the ordinary tourist from undertaking to fly his own aeroplane from Australia to England. Most travellers would not wish to arrive in England in such a-haggard state. Least of all would those of the sex of Miss Amy Johnson who has, hv a flight from England to Japan, placed another remarkable achievement to her credit. Yet every flight that can reduce the time that is taken to fly from Australia to England, or from England to Australia, is bringing nearer the day when a fast air service linking the Dominions with the Mother Country may be profitably inaugurated. Record-breaking “solo” flights over such a long distance becotpe necessarily something in the nature of tests of the endurance iof the airmen, but they indicate also—.what is itself highly valuable—the reliability of the modern flying machine. Whatever its detractors may say, the world today can boast young men and women

who possess the courage, the stamina, and the resourcefulness that ate essential to success in long-distance flying, and its factories are building aeroplanes which this gallant generation can depend on to do all that is required of them. This combination of airman and mechanic can, and doubtless will, surmount any difficulties that still tend to delay the time when a regular air service will link up the corners of the globe.