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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 1, 2010 19:31:34 GMT 12
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 1, 2010 19:52:36 GMT 12
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 1, 2010 21:43:56 GMT 12
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 1, 2010 22:15:19 GMT 12
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Post by flyjoe180 on Aug 1, 2010 22:29:26 GMT 12
Really interesting reads there Dave, thanks.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 2, 2010 14:15:14 GMT 12
No problem. Some of the text has come out really small so thanks to Photobucket resizing it, so when i get a chance I'll replace a few of these artivcles with bigger versions of the text.
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Post by shorty on Aug 2, 2010 16:37:04 GMT 12
Love the style of language that they used in those days
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Post by tazjet on Aug 8, 2010 18:21:45 GMT 12
No way would CAA ever certify a Flying Boat service these days even were someone to find an aircraft to operate it and that's without even contemplating OSH compliance rules.
Gosh the romance is gone from aviation but we can still dream can't we?
Anybody here know exactly where at Wellington's Evan's Bay flying boats operated from? I always supposed it was around the patent Slip but someone advises me the Evans Bay Yacht Club is the former terminal building?
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Post by dakman on Aug 9, 2010 10:05:26 GMT 12
Had thought it operated from the Shelley Bay Airforce base but am sure a Wellington person can confirm
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 9, 2010 19:18:38 GMT 12
Shelly Bay was a Navy base till around 1946 when it was handed to the RNZAF
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glycol
Squadron Leader
Posts: 103
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Post by glycol on Aug 9, 2010 22:42:10 GMT 12
Here's a link to the Evans Bay Yacht & Motor Boat Club and if you scroll down a bit you will find a little about the terminal. The Sunderland services to the Charham Islands in the 1960s used a boat with Barney Daniels to shift the pax. He assisted in many ways with his boats at the time. www.ebymbc.org.nz/assets/Spinnaker_Apr09.pdf
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 9, 2010 22:51:20 GMT 12
Did the Empires and subsequent airline flying boats operate into Lyttleton or otago Harbours too? Or anywhere else? Or was it just Auckland and Wellington thst got the service and you had to link via rail or Union Airways?
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Aug 11, 2010 15:36:18 GMT 12
Anybody here know exactly where at Wellington's Evan's Bay flying boats operated from? I always supposed it was around the patent Slip but someone advises me the Evans Bay Yacht Club is the former terminal building? There's a block of flats in art-deco style that was used as TEAL's stores depot and it was directly opposite where the flying boats were operated from. The block of flats are still in existence. The National Library has a whole lot of photographs of TEAL's Solent operation in Evans Bay online, including the commissioning of the braby pontoon some time after the service began. In one of those photographs, you can clearly see the block of flats I mentioned directly across the road from the braby. Prior to the pontoon being installed, passengers were loaded into a launch from an adjacent jetty and ferried out to the Solent anchored in the bay. The National Library website has several photos of that as well, plus yet more photographs of Solents (on at least two occasions) that lost floats while landing in big seas in the bay. The same website also contains a large number of photographs of the salvage of a RNZAF Catalina that crash-landed and sunk in Evans Bay. Plus even earlier photos of visits to Evans Bay by the Empire flying-boats Centaurus and Aotearoa (ZK-AMA). I posted a URL to a thread in this group a couple of years ago, but I think all of the URLs at the National Library website have since changed. I'll carry out a search later and see if I can track down an address for where those photographs are stored now. There was a story in the Dominion Post newspaper (I cannot remember how long ago, but considerably more than a year) about the site of TEAL's flying-boat base being marked by a monument by Wellington City Council. I cannot be certain, but I think I may have posted the article to this group. I'm sure I posted it to a couple of newsgroups. I've searched the STUFF site but have been unable to locate the story, although there is nothing unusual in that as they used to delete many local news stories from their website after a period of time. However, I've most likely got the story as a notepad document (formatted for posting to newsgroups) somewhere, so I'll do a search for it later and if I manage to find it, I'll reformat it (if necessary) for reposting to ProBoards-hosted groups and repost it into this thread.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Aug 12, 2010 22:07:48 GMT 12
I managed to locate that newspaper article and it was published by The Wellingtonian and not The Dominion Post. It is archived on the STUFF website, so I've reproduced it below. Also....I've been searching the National Library website for the photographs of TEAL's operations in Evans Bay, but they've moved everything around and completely revamped the site, and I haven't managed to find them so far. However, I've got lower resolution copies of many of the TEAL in Evans Bay photos that were on that site, plus several others that I don't recall being on there. I think these photographs all came from the Evening Post archives. I've had them on a hard-drive for a few years. Here is a photograph of the block of flats I was talking about....TEAL kept their stores in a couple of the lock-up garages and Customs used another lock-up garage to process passengers. The block of flats is still there today. According to the notes I've got with the photos, this one was taken on 3rd October 1950 which was the date when TEAL inaugurated their Wellington-Sydney flying-boat service. The second photograph shows the crowd gathered for the official speeches before the first flight to Sydney. Initially, passengers were conveyed by launch out to the Solents which were moored out in the bay. From October 1951, passengers used a new international terminal that was built on newly-reclaimed land with the terminal being equipped with a braby pontoon. I'll upload the rest of the photographs to Photobucket and post them to a new thread either tomorrow or sometime over the weekend. Flying boat memorial a step closerBy ANDREW LIMBE - The Wellingtonian | 11:34AM - Wednesday, 28 May 2008COG PARK in Evans Bay could soon feature a new memorial dedicated to the Tasman Empire Airways (TEAL) Solent flying boats, which landed there between 1950 and 1954.
It is proposed the memorial design will incorporate a wooden propeller from one of these aircraft.
Wellington City Council has indicated support for the project by offering their Urban Design Team to assist in design and installation.
Although the council has not allocated funding for new memorials, it might be willing to make a small financial contribution dependent on other support.
Local resident Tom Van der Kwast arrived in New Zealand on a TEAL Solent, and is actively involved in making the memorial a reality.
"I arrived right here in Evans Bay, basically right outside my [current] home, in 1952 from Sydney.
"It was nothing like it is these days. The flight took eight hours and it was beautiful, very slow and memorable.
"Another chap, Eddie Schneider, who lives just down the road, also arrived on a Solent in 1952," Mr Van der Kwast says.
"I talked to him and a few other chaps, we got some financial backing, so said lets do it.
"Flying boats have occasionally landed here since 1928, making Evans Bay this country's first international airport.
"We have got council approval and there is a propeller available. Now it is just a matter of waiting for the process and getting through some red tape."
MoTAT, Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology, has a propeller, but obtaining it was not straightforward.
If MoTAT was unable to release the propeller, one might have to be sourced from Australia.
An upgrade of Cog Park by Wellington City Council was completed in December 2007.
The council believes the TEAL memorial would enhance the area and encourage more public use.
The first commercial flying boat service between Sydney and Wellington began in October 1950. The Wellington base was Evans Bay. Planes docked beside a small passenger terminal near Hataitai Beach.
The trip from Sydney took around eight hours. The service ceased in 1954 when conventional aircraft started flying across the Tasman Sea.www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/local/the-wellingtonian/525632
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Post by kb on Sept 15, 2010 18:45:15 GMT 12
I think it's ironic that the Auckland Gas Company used a drawing of the aircraft which paved the way for the eventual replacement of flying boats! Boeing 247.
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Post by kb on Sept 15, 2010 18:47:10 GMT 12
Also I meant to say thanks to Dave for his posts.
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