This time I'd like to show you two retro cards from New Zealand. One of them advertises the famous Coral Route operated by Tasman Empire Airways Limited in the fifties. As it says on the card "it was one of the most exotic airline routes ever established, well served by large four engined flying boats".

More vivid description can be also found at the website of TEAL. "Flying over the boundless blue Pacific in the 1950s still had a touch of daring, swashbuckling allure, especially when you were low enough to see the sharks. Pilots were demigods in Ray Bans, hostesses were angels in nifty uniforms."

"The service would leave from Auckland in the morning and touchdown mid-afternoon at Suva's Laucala Bay in Fiji. A line-up of stately black Daimlers, Australian Holdens, and war-surplus Jeepneys with surrey tops, were on hand to ferry passengers to the Grand Pacific Hotel a refined and elegant British colonial building on the waterfront. Passengers enjoyed afternoon tea, a nap, pink gin, and dinner, followed by billiards, and perhaps by conversation with several Somerset Maugham ghosts lurking in the saloon bar."

"Next day the passengers were flying northeast to Samoa, landing on the crystal lagoon off what is now Faleolo Airport. This time they were taken to the legendary Aggie Grey's Hotel - to be met by Aggie herself, a woman who made her millions selling hamburgers to American troops and providing the model for Broadway's "Bloody Mary". Refreshed by another night of dancing and fine food, passengers were up early bound for Tahiti, the French colony that has lured sailors, artists and writers for centuries. But along the way they alighted at the world's most magical transit point - Aitutaki in the Cook Islands."

new zealand (aotearoa)

location

in the southwestern Pacific Ocean

inhabitants

4,570,038

capital

Wellington

sent from

South Island, NZ

Thank you Pieter for those beautiful cards!