TRANS-PACIFIC FLIGHT.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 May 1921, Page 5

TRANS-PACIFIC FLIGHT.

LIEUT. PARER’S AMBITION. LONG TOUR TO RAISE FUNDS. Sydney, May 17. Another ambitious enterprise is contemplated by Lieutenant Parer, the Australian aviator, who became famous by hi® feat of bumping acroas the world from England to Sydney in a decrepit old aeroplane, and has since pioneered a regular aerial service between Melbourne and certain islands in Bass Strait. He is going to try a flight across the Pacific from Australia to America, for which a prize of £20,000 is on offer. But he wants £15,000 to attempt the feat, most of it for the purchase of a firat-ciass machine. The best aeroplane that money can buy is reallv wanted, for no one can fly across the Pacific, over long stretches from island to island, unless the machine is absolutely dependable. Although it is possible to follow a chain of island® from Australia twothirds of the way across, so that an emergency landing place w’ould nearly alwayd be handy, there is a great empty waste of ocean on the American side, where a failure of the machise would mean certain death. To raise the £15,000. Parer will start on May 30, in the de Haviland in which he won the Australian Derby, on a flight around Australia. He will go from thi Glenhuntly Aerodrome in Victoria, to South Australia, thence to Perth, to Broome, to Darwin, and then down through the Eastern States to Melbourne. It is intended to give joy flights in the towns en route; to distribute advertising .matter, and to prepare a film entitled “Around Australia by Air.” There will be three in the party -Parer, a manager and observer, and a mechanic. Lieutenant Mclntosh, the big Scotsman who accompanied Parer in his acros’s-the-world flight, and shared all his many crashes and his privations, was killed recently in a flying accident in West Australia.