Story: Mail and couriers

Reading the airmail

Reading the airmail

This resident of Haast on the West Coast wastes no time before opening and reading mail, sitting on the wing of the Fox Moth plane that delivered it, in 1935. Small and isolated settlements could only receive a fast and frequent mail service from 1935, when the first regular internal airmail service was introduced. Before this Haast received a fortnightly mail service by packhorse. The airmail service was weekly and cost no more.

Using this item

Alexander Turnbull Library, Whites Aviation Collection
Reference: WA-AVH-07-1-G
Photograph by Leo Lemuel White

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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How to cite this page:

Tim Shoebridge, 'Mail and couriers - Mail in the 20th century', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/photograph/23056/reading-the-airmail (accessed 20 April 2024)

Story by Tim Shoebridge, published 11 Mar 2010