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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 8 (February 1, 1931)

Gas-hoppers

Gas-hoppers.

New Zealand is likely to become a suburb of Sydney if the cream of Aussie's youth continues to descend upon it out of the blue, thereby making the Tasman look small. When Mr. Menzies dropped in
The Railway Buffer

The Railway Buffer

the other day he found Welcome on the mat, but had he given us the wheeze we might have arranged for him to meet New Zealand on firmer ground. Under the circumstances it would have been excusable had his first impression been that New Zealand's name is mud; however, we prefixed “mire” with “ad” and all was well. Let ‘em all came; where there's life there's hops. For to-day Man is a gas-hopper, and the whole earth is his hop-patch. Such once little-known outposts as Neuralgia, Central Heating, Upper Tooting, Lower Honking, The Far Yeast, The Near Beer, Alice Springs, Bertha Bounds, Sciatica, Lumbago, The Steppes of Siberia, The Ladders of Hosiery, The Canaries, The Hen and Chickens, The Two Black Crows, Jamaica, and other rum places, are to-day more accessible than a hot lunch on washing day. The gas-hopper or aeroplane has knit the loose strands of the earth into a zig-zag jumper, and transported civilisation to the heat spots of the earth, where once the uneducated savage regarded the human head more as an aid to interior decoration than a business asset.

The planet's dimensions have been reduced aeroplanetically. To-day it is possible to visit your rich uncle in Fiji, touch him for a fiver and return after a loan flight, in time to circulate the good news among the local licensed victuallers. It is nothing nowadays for a lady to take a fly round the well-known shopping routes. Its a small world, dear reader, and getting smaller every day.