If you want to speak to someone overseas urgently these days you can do so in many immediate ways.

You can even see the person as you do it.

When the European settlers came to Australia in 1788, the only way of communication was by letter that went by ship.

This took many months.

As the years went by ships travelled a little faster but it was still counted in months.

At the end of World War I, wireless telegraphs made it much quicker but on many occasions, written correspondence by letter was the only effective way to communicate important or personal information.

What was needed was a fast way of delivering these letters.

Intrepid aviators were the answer.

Australia’s most famous aviator is Sir Charles Kingsford Smith but a great partner pilot was Charles Ulm.

In April 1934, not long before he was lost somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, Ulm carried the very first airmail letters from Australia to New Zealand.

Gerringong’s Val Noble wrote one of those very first letters that travelled in the plane Ulm flew.

This is the letter and the envelope. The fact that the stamps are missing from the envelope is not unusual.

Stamp collectors, including myself, regularly raided letters to add to their collection. The stamps on this letter would have been highly prized.