On 7 January 1931 Australian aviator Guy Menzies (1909-1940) completed the first solo trans-Tasman flight, with a crash-landing in Harihari on the West Coast. Menzies began his flight in Sydney at 1am, in the ‘Southern Cross Junior’ Avro Sports Avian biplane which was the same plane used by Charles Kingsford Smith to complete the first (crewed) trans-Tasman flight in 1928. Menzies intended to fly to Blenheim but bad weather forced him off course. Around 3pm he mistook the La Fontaine swamp near Harihari for flat land and crash-landed his aircraft, which flipped upside down. The flight had taken 11 hours and 45 minutes, 2 ½ hours less than Kingsford’s time.

During the Second World War, Menzies was a Squadron Leader in the Royal Air Force. He and his crew were killed on 1 November 1940, when his flying boat was shot down over the Mediterranean en route from Malta to Sicily. No remains of the aircraft or crew were ever found. He is commemorated at the Alamein Memorial in Egypt.

This photograph of Menzies at the scene the crash landing comes from the collection extracted from the holdings of New Zealand Post Archives, which is part of the Post Office Museum and Archives.

Information sourced from www.nzhistory.net.nz/completion-of-first-trans-tasman-sol...

Archives reference: AAME 8106 W5603 115/ 11/8/241

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