From 1 January 1930, Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm's ANA flew a Brisbane - Sydney service. This ceased on 26 June 1931. New England Airways started an airmail service between Sydney and Brisbane on 24 November 1931. New England Airways was renamed Airlines of Australia in October 1935.
Australian National Airways (ANA)
Brisbane - Sydney, January 1930
From 1 January 1930, Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm's ANA started a Brisbane - Sydney service. The shown cover was postmarked in Sydney on 31 December and flown from there to Brisbane on the first flight. The pilot and co-pilot were Kingsford Smith and Scotty Allan.
As a registered air mail cover it is franked with 7½d.
Extension to Melbourne in June, 1930
From 1 June 1930 the service was extended and became Brisbane - Sydney - Melbourne.
This registered cover was flown from Brisbane to Melbourne. It is postmarked at Brisbane late on 31 May 1930 and so would have been flown to Sydney on 1 June and then flown on the second Sydney - Melbourne flight on 2 June. It is backstamped 2 June.
Registered letters should always be handed in at a post office.
However, it seems that this cover was posted in an ordinary letter
box and then picked out as having been intended for registered post.
That is the reason for the IRREGULARLY POSTED cachet [1].
Brisbane to Canada via New Zealand by sea, December 1930
This cover is postmarked in Brisbane on 10 December 1930 and is addressed to Canada. It is franked with 5d to cover the internal Australian air mail service and would be flown from Brisbane to Sydney and sent from there by sea.
From the New Zealand view, the interesting point is that it has an Auckland
Loose Letter transit mark on 15 December.
It therefore went on the first stage of its sea journey to
New Zealand where it would connect with the steamer to Vancouver.
Mail from New Zealand, January - February 1931
To mark the 10th Anniversary of New Zealand's first daily air mail service (between Christchurch, Ashburton and Timaru), a special envelope was produced and signed by Capt. Euan Dickson who had been the pilot on the original service.
The covers were all postmarked on 31 January 1931 in Christchurch, but as there was no air mail service at that time in New Zealand, they were sent to Sydney by sea to be flown by Qantas from Cloncurry to Normanton.
As the 4d postage was sufficient for all Australian airmail services,
it is likely that they were flown from Sydney to Brisbane by
ANA and then from Brisbane to Normanton via Cloncurry by Qantas.
They were backstamped on arrival in Normanton on 18 February.
to New Zealand, March 1931
This cover is addressed to New Zealand from Cloncurry and would be flown by Qantas from Cloncurry to Brisbane and by ANA from Brisbane to Sydney.
It is franked with the Kingsford Smith commemorative stamps,
but is postmarked in Cloncurry on 16 March which is 3 days
before their issue on 19 March.
The date of the Brisbane backstamp is not clear while the cover is
backstamped in Christchurch on 31 March.
Extension to Tasmania, May 1931
In January 1931, ANA extended their passenger service to include a three times a week service from Melbourne to Hobart (via Launceston) in Tasmania, but mails were not flown until 1 May.
The first airmail flight was due to leave Hobart on 1 May, but due to bad weather, the incoming plane did not proceed beyond Launceston. The mail on 1 May was therefore taken by car from Hobart to Launceston and flown to Melbourne from there. A large cachet was applied to the covers.
This registered cover is postmarked in Hobart on 30 April and is one of the small number addressed to New Zealand. After being taken by car from Hobart to Launceston, it was flown from there to Melbourne and then flown from Melbourne to Sydney. The journey to New Zealand was then by sea.
On the back, it has a Hobart registered postmark on 30 April and
a Melbourne datestamp on 1 May.
However, the Sydney backstamp is not until 5 May.
Presumably the reason is that the service to Melbourne was late
due to the car journey and so missed the expected connection.
It was then backstamped in Taihape, New Zealand on 13 May.
The next cover was flown on the first service from Melbourne to Hobart on 2 May. A similar cachet was applied as on the first flight to Melbourne, but with the route in reverse order.
Australian National Airways services between Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart ceased on 26 June 1931.
The plane used on these services was the Avro Ten. The 1928 trans-Pacific and trans-Tasman flights of Kingsford Smith and Ulm had been in the Fokker FVII trimotor Southern Cross. The British firm A.V. Roe obtained a license to build the Fokker FVII for sale in the British Empire as the Avro Ten. Australian National Airways bought five which they named the Southern Cloud, Star, Sky, Moon and Sun.
The Southern Cloud disappeared between Sydney and Melbourne on 21 March, 1931 and the wreckage was not found until 1958.
The Southern Sun started the All Australian Airmail to the UK in November 1931, but crashed in Malaya and never flew again. The Southern Star continued the flight, but after its return to Australia, ANA ceased operations.
The
Southern Moon was bought by Ulm,
redesigned and renamed the
Faith in Australia in 1933.
It carried the
first official airmail
between New Zealand and Australia in February 1934.
The Southern Star was bought by
Hart Aircraft Service
and was used once more to fly mail between Melbourne and Tasmania.
New England Airways
The first New Zealand acceptances for the New England Airways service left Wellington for Sydney by sea on 11 December 1931. They were then flown by a Ryan monoplane from Sydney to Brisbane on 17 December.
The cover is postmarked Christchurch on 10 December.
It is one of only 10 New Zealand covers carried on the
flight to Brisbane and
was backstamped at Brisbane on 17 December.
Also flown trans-Tasman
This next cover was flown from Brisbane to Sydney by New England Airways before being flown on the first official trans-Tasman airmail from Australia to New Zealand in April 1934.
It is postmarked in Brisbane on 27 March and there is an arrival
backstamp in Sydney on 28 March.
It was flown from Sydney on 11 April, arriving in New Plymouth on 12 April.
It was then flown to Auckland where it was backstamped on 12 April.
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All scans were made by the author.
Information on this page is taken from:
Airmails of New Zealand, volume 2 (1986) compiled by
Douglas A Walker, and
The New Zealand Airmail Catalogue, (2nd Edition, 1994)
by James Stapleton.
Both are published by the
Air Mail Society of New Zealand
[1] The Postage Stamps of New Zealand Vol 3, published by the
Royal Philatelic Society of New Zealand , 1955.