I have attempted in the following paper to deal with the commercial aspect of airsurveying from my own personal experience. The technical side of the work I willnot attempt to go into fully, as there are others who are better able to dealwith that aspect than I am. As air surveying has been developed in this countryentirely by private enterprise unassisted by subsidies, it may be of interestbriefly to review its development to date.

Early Work.

One of the few benefits that we derived from the War was the development ofaerial photography to a stage where it could be of great value for explorationand mapping work in the Empire. The authorities responsible to the Governmentfor the development of civil aviation in this country and the Empire failed torealise this, and it was left to private enterprise to develop that side ofcivil aviation, the Authorities concentrating their efforts on the developmentof air transport.

THE CHAIRMAN : I, personally, am looking forward with great pleasure to hearingwhat Flight-Lieut. Renison Bell has to tell us about Flying in Australia. I havenever been to Australia myself, though I hope to do so one day in an airship,but I have studied flying conditions there as far as is possible from adistance, for the past five or six years, and my studies have forced me to theconclusion that Australia is the foremost country for aerial transport, not onlyin the British Empire, but in the world. It is therefore particularlyinteresting to hear about it from one who knows. In our own country there aredifficulties in regard to climate and geographical conditions which rather keepus from progressing as much as we could wish, and whenever I feel a littledepressed about the way things are going in Great Britain it is refreshing toturn to Australia and think : “This is British, and it is makinggood.” and I feel it is going to make a great deal better in thefuture.