A Qantas cover from Sandakan to Australia in 1937

 

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.

 Initially, Imperial Airways flew the route from Croydon to Singapore and then carried on to Darwin and  due to problems with some of their planes, QEA took over from Darwin to Brisbane. And QEA had sole responsibility for the Singapore to Brisbane section a month later. With the advent of the flying boat service in June 1938, the route between Singapore and Darwin was flown by an Empire flying boat belonging to QEA. By this time the new base was changed from Brisbane to Sydney.

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.

The De Havilland DH 86 was the initial plane used for the Singapore-Australia leg of the Empire Air Mail service to Brisbane.

In 1938, the Short-S23 Empire Boat was used from Singapore and the Australian base was changed to Sydney.