The Lonely Sea and the Sky by Sir Francis Chichester

acres.

CHAPTER 7
    LEARNING TO FLY

    We developed this property in two ways. First, we planted it with pine-trees. Geoffrey was an enthusiastic tree-grower, and believed in forestry as a profitable investment. I like trees too, so we got cracking. I raised the first 40,000 trees in my backyard from seeds collected from pine cones; it was fun watching the little pine-needle seedlings emerge with the seeds on their backs. The beds were protected from the sun's heat by scrim (a kind of sacking) stretched across wooden frames. We planted out these experimental seedlings on a hill in rows six feet apart, with nine feet between seedlings. They took well, so we started a nursery of our own, and soon had several planting gangs at work. We planted a million trees, and Geoffrey's son has been milling them for the past ten years. I am proud of having raised a crop of timber in my lifetime from seed planted in my own garden. New Zealand is a wonderful tree-growing country; our pines used to put on six feet in height a year, and, once they got started, an inch in diameter. We built miles of road, and at one time had three teams of surveyors at work. We had to sell off small lots of land as sites for weekend cottages in order to pay for the whole scheme. We bought another property alongside, and cut that up as well. We built up a sales force of thirty salesmen, selling only our own land. Geoffrey was himself a wonderful salesman, but I found that I could not sell my own property. I became shy and inhibited about it, which I never did when I was selling things belonging to other people. The only trouble was that Geoffrey was always selling ideas to me. We bought the Miller Chair Company that supplied seats for theatres and cinemas. I never could get really interested in this. We didn't know enough about it, and lost money through it. However, we now owned three private companies operating in land which were doing well. By the time I was twenty-six my income was £10,000 a year. Then Geoffrey sold me the idea of an aviation company, and we formed the Goodwin–Chichester Aviation Company Limited. My first flight made me wildly excited and enthusiastic. We took the New Zealand agency for A. V. Roe, bought two Avro Avians, and began a joy-riding tour of New Zealand.
    Â Â This was good fun; first we had to scout around for a field suitable for landing and taking off passengers; then we advertised. Our aim was to fly around as many passengers as we could in the few hours when they flocked out to the field. We had four of the best pilots in New Zealand, but their experience had been with heavier military planes in the First World War, and they found the light Avian landing on grass fields too fragile for the job. We were lucky that we only lost ten shillings a head on the 6,000 passengers we carried. Undercarriages were the chief weakness in the planes, and sometimes farm fences seemed to be in the wrong place. One day I got exasperated at one of our crashes, and determined to learn how to fly myself, to find out what it was all about.
    Â Â I went down to the New Zealand Air Force station at Christchurch and had some lessons there in an Avro 504K. This plane had a rotary engine, which means that the propeller and the engine went round together. You could not throttle back the engine; you just cut out the ignition when coming in to land, and cut it in again hopefully if you made a bad landing and wanted to take off again quickly. The engine used castor oil, which stank to high heaven, and sprinkled the pilot's face copiously. I struggled away trying to learn, but was a hopelessly bad pupil. By December 1928 I had had eighteen hours fifty minutes of dual instruction, and still could not fly. I think this was partly because of trying to mix flying with an intensely active business life. Geoffrey and I were running five private companies at full blast, besides our partnership, and I was ruthlessly trying to make money for twelve hours a