The “Coral Route” — Radio NZ's sound archives

[kiwithrottlejockey]

On Wednesday afternoon last week, Jesse Mulligan played a tape from the 1950s, recorded on a flight across the South Pacific on TEAL's Coral Route.

This afternoon, he continued with a further recording made at Aitutaki.

EDIT: The third instalment was broadcast on Wednesday, 26th July. Link added below.

You can download the recordings as MP3 files from here....

• SOUND ARCHIVES — 12 July 2017

• SOUND ARCHIVES — 19 July 2017

• SOUND ARCHIVES — 26 July 2017

Captain Joe Shephard was was in command of the flights during the audio recordings.

[Dave Homewood]

Thanks Bruce, I'll definitely have a listen to this. I have been wondering lately if there are any aircrew still around who flew the TEAL flying boats, with a WONZ Show interview in mind.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

Geoff White is still alive, Dave.

He flew as a Solent co-pilot on some of the Coral Route services as well as numerous trans-Tasman crossings.

Geoff was the co-pilot (with Captain Cliff le Couter) on the last Solent flight from Sydney to Wellington.

After that, he flew as a co-pilot on DC-6s out of Christchurch, then became a captain on Electras, DC-8s and DC-10s, based at Auckland.

But he lives in Australia and his son tells me he's unlikely to ever visit New Zealand again.

He must be pushing close to 90 now and his wife died last year.

I don't know if you'd be able to do an interview with him by phone, or skype (he uses skype to talk to his son in Wellington).

If you wanted to get in touch, I could get his contact details off his son next time I see him.

[Dave Homewood]

If he uses Skype, and he's happy to talk, that would be fine. I use a Skype recorder, it's far better than recording by phone and is almost as good as face to face. Please do ask his son, if you think of it.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

I've just edited the original post in this thread to insert a link to today's sound archive, which is still dealing with TEAL's Coral Route.