In 1931, Kingsford Smith and Australian National Airways planned a special Christmas flight to the UK. The pilot was to be G.U. Scotty Allan. Mail from New Zealand could be sent by sea and join the flight at Sydney.
NZ Internal flight and Australia-UK
In conjunction with this first All-Australian flight to the UK, Air Travel Ltd organised a flight on 12 November from Invercargill to Auckland stopping at Dunedin, Christchurch, Blenheim, Wellington, Palmerston North and New Plymouth to pick up mail which was then sent from Auckland or from Wellington to Sydney by sea. This was the first time that the new airmail stamps were used on air mail.
The first cover was flown from Invercargill to Wellington by Air Travel on November 12 from where it was sent to Sydney by sea. It was then flown on the All-Australian flight to the UK.
The cover is correctly franked as the postage rate was one shilling and fivepence
made up of 2d ordinary postage, 3d for the internal
flight in New Zealand and 1/- for the flight from Australia
to the UK.
Not flown on NZ Internal Flight
The second cover was posted in Lower Hutt near Wellington. As it was not flown internally in New Zealand, the postage rate was only one shilling and twopence.
Mail from Auckland (1555 items) was sent to Sydney on the
SS Ulimaroa while mail from
Wellington (1598 items) was sent on the SS Marama.
An identical special cachet was applied to the mail from both
Wellington and Auckland.
Some of the new airmail stamps were issued at Highfield on November 9, a day too early. Some were then used on covers to the UK.
Although the intention was clearly that they should be flown
on the Karachi - London service several, including the example, were
flown instead on the All Australian Airmail.
Details of the Australia - UK flight
Route: Darwin - Karachi
The flight to the UK started from Hobart, Tasmania on 19 November. The plane was an Avro 10 named Southern Sun. The crew was pilot: G U Allan, co-pilot: R N Boulton and wireless operator: L M Callaghan. There was one passenger: Lt Col Horace Brinsmead, the Australian Controller of Civil Aviation. New Zealand mail joined the flight at Sydney on 20 November. The total mail from Australia was 52,000.
Unfortunately, due to heavy rain, on 26 November the plane crashed on take-off from Alor Star (Alor Setar) in the Malayan state of Kedah.
Kingsford Smith left Sydney on 30 November in a relief Avro 10 (the Southern Star) and arrived at Alor Star on December 5. The mails were transferred and Kingsford Smith, Allan and Boulton continued to the UK in the Southern Star arriving at Croydon Airport, London on 16 December.
There is a manuscript date on the front of the first cover indicating that it arrived in Thurso in the north of Scotland on 17 December while the Highfield cover has a 17 December Liverpool backstamp.
Details of this eventful journey are given in the Airmails
of New Zealand, Vol 2.
Brinsmead did not wait for Kingsford Smith, but caught a KLM
flight and was badly injured when it crashed on 7 December in
Bangkok.
Special cover from Australia
Australian National Airways produced a large special cover for the flight and it is shown below along with the Australian cachet. No examples of the cover are known from New Zealand.
There is a map of the route on the back of the cover.
A return Christmas airmail from the UK was planned, but it was delayed until January 1932.
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All scans were made by the author.
Information on this page is taken from:
Airmails of New Zealand, volume 1 (1955) and
volume 2 (1986) compiled by Douglas A Walker,
and the New Zealand Airmail Catalogue, (2nd Edition, 1994)
by James Stapleton.
They are published by the
Air Mail Society of New Zealand