"Popeye" Lucas in Person
"| HERE was once a farmer-this is a true story-on a sheep station in the back country of Otago who needed a Spare part for an electric generator, He needed it badly enough to tramp 20 miles over rough country to the nearest telephone to order it. He put through his call and started back. When he got home the spare part was lying in the back yard. For F. J. ("Popeye") Lucas this little delivery job by plane and parachute-it would have taken days by bus and launch--was "all in the day’s work," "and that’s the title given to four interviews with Mr. Lucas which are to be heard from 4YA, the first on Monday, August 9, at 7.15 p.m. "Popeye" Lucas, who was one of New Zealand’s' leading wartime bomber pilots, took up farming after the war, but he didn’t settle to that very well, and in 1947 went in with C. W. Hewett who was doing tourist runs with a Percival Proctor plane from Frankton, outside Queenstown. The birth of this air service is described in the first programme of All in the Day’s Work. Flying over rough country and landing on beaches on their runs to the whitebaiters at Big Bay; they had bad luck with their planes in their first year-an Auster down in the Lammerlaw Range and a Proctor and a Moth in trouble at Big Bay. But since 1948 their planes, always carefully serviced by Flight Engineer Barry Topliss, have had no accidents; and their beach landings have been made safer by two-way radio communication betweén Big Bay and their aerodrome. The part the air service has played in the Big Bay whitebaiting venture is told in the’ second programme. Mr. Lucas is convinced that the coming thing in mountain rescue work -discussed in the third programme-is the helicopter, in which he is keenly interested. Apart from work ia these fields; his service has been used for aerial topdressing, seed-sowing an’ rabbit poisoning, transport of all kinds of material for farmers, supplying trampers, deer-cullers and hunters, and for tourist flying-and the last interview deals with the future of the tourist busi/ness in this area.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19540806.2.38
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 785, 6 August 1954, Page 18
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364"Popeye" Lucas in Person New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 785, 6 August 1954, Page 18
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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