Argus de Grey River (Nouvelle Zélande), 21 janvier 1913 Clark, J. E.: "airships, New Zealand, 1913, 1909", Magonia Exchange, 19 août 2008
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(To the Editor).
Sir, -- The statement in a recent issue of the Otago Daily Times that an airship passed over Dunedin one evening lately, will call to mind the fever of excitement that was stirred up a few years ago [1909] by the alleged appearance of a mysterious aerial visitor in the vicinity of Kelso and Tapanui, and being resident in Southland at the time, the details are still fresh in my memory. At the outset I might state that both Kelso and Tapanui are in the prohibition district of Clutha, so that there can be no possibility of the residents in that locality being guilty of “seeing things.” The statement that an airship had been seen near Kelso duly reached Dunedin, and the Otago Daily Times promptly dispatched a reporter to the up-country township to get particulars first hand. A number of school children, who alleged they saw the airship in broad daylight, were duly interviewed, and were induced to make rough sketches of the mysterious visitors, and these duly made their appearance in print, together with columns of interviews and statements of residents of the locality. One old lady stated that she was awakened suddenly one night by a “loud whirring noise” which seemed to come from the sky, whilst another said that these mysterious noises at night caused the horses in an adjacent paddock to gallop about madly, and going out to see what was the matter, saw a dark object in the sky, carrying a light at either end, and traveling at a tremendous speed towards the mountains. When yet another Kelsoite rushed into the township with the statement that he had found an empty petrol tin and a spanner, it was taken as proof positive that the aircraft was no myth but a matter of substance, and the many readers of the daily press were regaled with the statement that the airship was the invention of some engineer who was experimenting in aerial navigation, and certainly much in advance of anything then known in the aviation world. The aircraft then appears to have made a general tour of Southland, for at Waikaka (near Gore) some dredge hands declared that it passed so close one night that they could hear the voices of the occupants speaking a “strange foreign language.” At Invercargill a policeman in a state of excitement told one of the local papers that he distinctly saw the lights of the airship passing to the westward of the town. He was positive because he took a lamp post and the aerial visitor in a line, closed one eye, and with the other saw the stranger disappear into the night. The ship was then alleged to have been seen on several occasions in the vicinity of the Longwood range, one gentleman, who said he saw it from his house one afternoon, sending what he purported to be a full description of the aircraft to one of the Invercargill papers. At Colac Bay the local storekeeper also rushed into print with a statement that the ship passed quite low over the township one night and made out to sea, and some blue lights being seen out in Foveaux Straits a few minutes afterwards, the storekeeper gave it out through the press that these lights were signals from a foreign warship which was acting in concert with the airship. Some time afterwards the aerial visitor was supposed to have been seen near the Nuggets light house, going in the direction of the sea. The knowing ones then declared that the airship landed on the deck of a foreign cruiser far out at sea, “which showed that some of the Continental nations were far ahead of us in the science of aviation.” It is quite evident from the foregoing that the Southerners have powerful imaginations, and although prohibition has a good grip on that end of the country, they can see things in the air that must turn our sober-going West Coasters green with envy. – I am, etc.,
EX-SOUTHLANDER.
Reefton, January 16th., 1913.
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