'FLY WEST' - IVAN SOUTHALL

[Fantome]

The author recounts crossing the Atlantic after ab initio in Canada. the ship the Aquitania ..' in a fearful storm rolling from beam to beam
. . . how does she stay in one piece with all that human cargo aboard? How come you're crossing the Atlantic at all?'

'Twenty-two years of age, committed to the elements like a cork or a bean or a fleck of spume. All those ancestors working for hundreds of years to send life down to you and it gets treated like its worth a penny a mile. The food they feed you is not even fit for rendering down, the soap they wash you with (I'll never forget its name) burns the skin off your hands. Every boy with his little bag of 'comforts' packed by women volunteers (working shoulder to shoulder to a background of martial music) from fourth-grade articles supplied at profit by patriotic manufacturers operating to specially reduced standards for the duration of the war. How much of that stuff you simply have to throw away.'

Needless to say a brilliant book . .. with much adulation throughout for his mighty Sunderland.

(personally and incidentally the apprentice experience of helping to convert a former RNZAF Sunderland for service with Ansett Flying Boat Services for the Lord Howe Island run as VH-BRF in 1964 supplied fond lasting impressions of the characters for whom those boats were in their blood. )

[Stanwell]

Thanks for the heads-up, Fantome.
Sounds like an especially good read.

BTW, I was one of those wide-eyed youngsters that used to haunt the Rose Bay flying boat base.
I remember taking particular interest in the civvy conversion of VH-BRF, 'Islander'.
It's comforting to know that she's in the care of Kermit Weeks in Florida.

[Checklist Charlie]

One the first things I did when I became eligible for staff travel benefits in 1971 was take a return day trip to Lord Howe in the Ansett Flying Boat.

The next day I went to Norfolk in the DC4 for a few days.

Memories.

CC