TASMAN AIR CROSSING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 September 1943, Page 3

TASMAN AIR CROSSING

MADE BY WOMAN OF 89. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, September 27. A recent passenger of Tasman Empire Airways, Limited, is thought to be the oldest person to have flown from New Zealand to Australia. She is Mrs. E. A. Kirkland, now in her 90th year, and she has spent the last few years in Auckland with her daughter and son-in.-law, Mrs. and the Rev. R. B. Davison. The latter is thp vicar of the Holy Sepulchre Church, Khyber Pass. Mrs. Kirkland came to Auckkland by the Niagara on that liner’s last visit to New Zealand before it was mined off the North Auckland coast in 1940. She is a resident of Melbourne and is returning to a daughter who lives there. Her only surviving son, the two others having been killed in the last war, is Dr. W. B. Kirkland, who was awarded the 0.8. E. for his services as superintendent of the Darwin Hospital when the Japanese made their first large-scale raid on Darwin Igst year. Her decision to fly back to Australia was apparently made by Mrs. Kirkland without any hesitation. She did not regard the flight, even though it was her first experience of this type of travel, as unusual, and did not require anybody to go with her to look after her.