Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1911. A DARING EXPLOIT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10214, 17 April 1911, Page 4

Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1911. A DARING EXPLOIT.

The gabled announcement that Dr Douglas Mawson is bringing out a military type of two-seated Blerio't aeroplane as part of his equipment for the Australian Antarctic expedition is interesting and important, as this is absolutely the last word in scientific transport, says the Telegraph. There is something audacious in the proposal to wrest from Nature her ages old secret by means of a machine of yesterday's invention. ' The mental vision conjures up a weird picture of that final dash for the Pole. We learn that the petrol .capacity will enable a distance of 180 miles to be covered without replenishing the tank; so chat when within 90 miles of the goal the intrepid explorers will make their supreme effort under conditions absolutely without parallel. The vast fields of eternal j snow; the appalling stillness and silence, ibroken only by the throb, throb of the motor, as the human bird wings its invasion into the Unknown ; the gambling with death; the acute pressure of the rarefied atmosphere on the lungs; the danger of the petrol freezing; without taking into account the possibility of accident to the mechanism, where a bad fall would mean almost certain death, as the victim would be frozen before succour came—these are some of the handicaps with which the pioneers in Polar flight will have to contend. On the reverse of the picture is the un-„ dying glory of achievement, should the fateful mission succeed and add one more item to the store of knowledge. Hitherto aeroplane flights have been made over settled country, where the airman was never very far ' from help if he needed it. It will indeed be the supreme test for the machine, and scientists and airmen the world over will await with intense interest the result of the forthcoming bold effort.