Prewar Qantas covers from British Borneo are difficult to find. The Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd or Qantas in short was formed in 1920. It was initially a flying taxi service and then obtained contracts in 1922 for delivering mail to remote towns in Queensland and in 1928 as part of the "Flying Doctor" service throughout Queensland and North Australia.
A linkup with Imperial
Airways was forged in 1931 with the start of an experimental airmail service
between GB and Australia in April of the same year with the mail continuing by
sea from Karachi until the flights were extended formally to Singapore in
December 1933. The Darwin to Brisbane flight stage was allocated to Qantas with
the distribution of mail further along by Butler Air Transport and Australia
National Airways.
In Jan 1934, Qantas and Imperial jointly formed Qantas Empire Airways Ltd (QEA), the predecessor of present day Qantas Airways with regular services between Brisbane to Darwin. After the first experimental flights in 1931, it was not until 8 December 1934 that the Empire Air Service was extended formally from Brisbane via various stopovers to Singapore to connect with the Imperial Airways service to GB. Fare paying passengers were carried over the entire route from April 1935.
modified images
from nzstamps.org.uk
This cover was
sent from Sandakan on 1 FEB 1937 to New South Wales, Australia. It carried the
inclusive Imperial Airmail rate of 25c where as the concurrent surface rate was
8c. With the outbreak of war, this was increased to 60c from September 1939 but
became 55c in May 1941.
It has backstamps
of Jesselton 3 FEB 1937 and Narromine NSW 15 FE 37. So it took more than 2
weeks to reach its destination and was probably not significantly faster than
surface mail which cost very much less. This may in part explain the less
common use of this service.
The route taken
would have included Sandakan via Jesselton to Singapore by sea. And then, it
was Singapore-Batavia-Sourabaya-Koepang-Darwin-DalyWaters-Cloncurry-Charlesville by Qantas Empire Airways. At Charlesville, it
was flown by Butler Air Transport to Narromine about 800km away before been
sent to the nearby town of Dubbo.