The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND SATURDAY, APRIL 5, 1930 THE REVOLUTION OF TRAVEL

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 940, 5 April 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND SATURDAY, APRIL 5, 1930 THE REVOLUTION OF TRAVEL

FROM Auckland, to Hastings, over a distance that, by motor-car, takes a full and very tiring day to accomplish, and by train the best part of a day and a night, five airplanes winged their way yesterday. They paused in their journey at Taupo, in the shadow of the spirit-haunted cone of Tauhara Mountain, and, while they rested there, another machine passed overhead, also on its way to the Hastings pageant. The movements of these planes symbolise a revolution in the processes of travel. While the Auckland flotilla of airplanes was approaching Hastings from the north, another was arriving from the south. Pilots had left Christchurch a day or two earlier, halting at Blenheim and Feilding, at each of which places others joined in the flight. These brought the total of machines scheduled to appear at the Hastings pageant today to nineteen or twenty; not a great number as flying goes in countries more aerially advanced, but a good total considering the fact that the present flying activity in New Zealand is less than two years old. The fa.shion in flying in this country really dates from the visit of Smith, whose flight across the Tasman stimulated the air-consciousness of the public. On the wave of enthusiasm that followed, several flying clubs were formed. People of conservative outlook feared that these organisations would be short-lived. Instead of that, there are now twenty in existence, and they are consolidating their position every day. They have attracted to their administration some of the best business brains in the country, and they have been uniformly fortunate in securing both a fine type of instructor and a keen type of active member. Boys of 16 or 17 are following the lead of older men in learning to fly, and among New Zealand girls, flying as a diversion has been accepted with enthusiasm. Several girls have already passed one or more of their tests, and others are learning. Three women pilots were expected to participate in the events at Hastings today. Coupled with the spread and development of aero clubs is the wider use of the private airplane. Not merely for pleasure, but for business as well, progress accepts and welcomes the straight, swift path of the airway. If not always as intimately interesting as travel by road or rail, journeying by air is at least pleasant and relaxing. The world below drifts leisurely backward, hills are mysteriously flattened, and farmland reveals its symmetrical, checkered pattern. Thus air-travel is setting new standards, measured by moments instead of hours, hours instead of days. The contrast with the old order, the order first of horse and wagon, then of railway, next of motor-car, is very strange. The path followed from the Waikato to Taupo by the aerial flotilla yesterday was roughly that followed by the early botanist, Bidwill, who left one of the first authentic records of a visit to Lake Taupo and the mountains of the Ruapehu group. But in BidwilFs case the journey was a difficult and protracted traverse on foot through an almost trackless wilderness. Years later the track to Taupo was followed with more or less irregularity by a Maori courier who had the task of taking mail through to isolated white settlements, and even as far as Hawke’s Bay. The Armed Constabularly worked through this country during and after the Maori Wars. Their pursuit of Te Kooti took them from Galatea to Opepe, where a small garrison was almost wiped out. Today the trails they followed so laboriously are, for their full distance, within the glance of the traveller in the sky. Below, too, is the coach road on which the old horse services operated in measured stages. Straightened and regraded, the same road carries arterial motor traffic today. It is significant of the changes brought about by modern and effective methods of transport that Taupo, long the most isolated and backward of North Island settlements, now aspires to have a regular airport of its own. Not many years ago, before the motorcar began bringing hundreds of visitors every season, Taupo simply slumbered in its undisturbed tranquillity. Today its long, rambling single street is lined with petrol pumps and garages. The tents of motorists are -pitched beside the lake, and, as if these marks of sophistication were not enough, the town has a landing-ground cleared for airmen, and hopes later, as the chairman of the Town Board informed the visitors from Auckland yesterday, to have a hangar built and everything ready for regular callers. From this it will obviously be an easy transition to the operation of flying-boats on the lake, cutting out the distance from Taupo to Tokaanu in a few minutes, or perhaps flying farther, and dropping into the silences of the beautiful lake, Roto Aira, that lies under the northern slope of Tongariro. This prospect, however, seems unpleasant to contemplate. In the spread of air-travel and the wider use of its immense advantages among the people, more may be lost than gained. When Bidwill tramped up the valley of the Waikato to Taupo, he saw and rejoiced in much that the modern traveller, even by motor-car, misses. And when travel to Taupo is regularly conducted by air, the voyagers will miss even more. But that is the way of progress.