It took two days to repair the Electra. On Sunday morning, June 27, Amelia and Fred left Bandung, hoping again to reach Australia. But what had been the conspiracy of instruments now became the conspiracy of time. For every fifteen degrees of longitude crossed, they would lose one hour; and the day would grow shorter the longer and farther they flew east.
For this reason they had to land, after only five hours of flying, at Koepang, on the island of Timor. The flight from Java to Timor had been for Amelia an experience in extremes, as the lush tropics became arid wastes—and rich abundance, monastic sparsity.
Except for a fuel shed at Koepang there were no other storage facilities. Amelia and Fred pulled out the cloth covers from the back of the fuselage and covered the props and engines. Then with the help of some of the natives they turned the Electra into the wind and staked it down to the ground.
The next morning, again before dawn, they climbed wearily into the plane. The Electra rolled down the grass runway and jumped into the air from the steep cliffs of the island. Over the Timor Sea the head winds were strong, and it was not until three and a half hours later that Amelia sighted the bright emerald sea on the northern coast of Australia. They landed at Port Darwin.
Again, as it had happened before in arriving at a new country, Amelia and Fred had to be fumigated. For the last time they stoically submitted to the spray guns.
At Port Darwin they unloaded their parachutes and sent them home. Over the Pacific a parachute would be of no use whatever. Gracefully declining all invitations, Amelia and Fred parted for their separate rooms to turn in early for much-needed rest. The next stop was Lae, New Guinea, only a few hours away from Australia, but an eternity away from home.
6. New Guinea to Howland Island
The flight from Port Darwin to Lae, on June 30, was a flight of seven hours and forty-three minutes of the same day. The flight from Lae to Howland Island, however, was a flight into yesterday. For Howland lay one day earlier across the international date line. By the flight to the other side of the 180° of longitude there was one day to be gained; but to get to the great divide, there were two hours to be lost. And two lives.
In March, before she had cracked up in the earlier try for Howland from Hawaii, AE had written: “It is much better not to let fatigue of any kind creep into the early part of any expedition, for it cannot be eliminated later.”
Now she was weary and tired from a fatigue that could not be eliminated. Twenty-two thousand miles of flying in only forty days had taken its unremitting toll upon her and Fred.