Search for missing plane - Barrington Tops

[Lotsafreshair]

We're at the pointy end now of all the research and analysis this year. Lots of work, done by many people, trying to finally bring closure to what is Australia's greatest aviation mystery. The disappearance of a Cessna 210 over Barrington Tops in August 1981.

It's all on from tomorrow, with us form BWRS hitting the scrub on Friday for the weekend.

Here's a micro doco that I made to help give some background.

http://youtu.be/Nm_A3bP_sto

[Travis22]

Fantastic work on that youtube clip Lotsafreshair. Really well done.

All the best to everyone out there, i look forward to the doco about your successful search!

Travis.

ps - Project Wittenoom... why Wittenoom? (Ive been to Wittenoom - as in the place, any relation to the naming here?)

[Lotsafreshair]

Thanks! The old asbestos mining town, eh? No, there's no significance. It's one of those randomly generated Project names that spit out of a police computer.

[FatCanyoner]

Good luck with the search. I look forward to hearing amazing stories of how one of Australia's greatest mysteries was solved!

[stepbystep]

Nice work Caro. Good luck with it.

[Lindsay]

Great work Caro. Good luck with the search.

[kanangra]

I was living in Taree which is near Barrington Tops when the plane went down. I recall all the searchers going out. A few years later I stumbled on a wreck up there and the local police sergeant showed a bit of interest until it was established that my "find" was a WW2 era Mosquito bomber!

I've done a few remote walks myself up there over the years always wondering if I would stumble upon it? The scrub is very very thick in places.

This is now the longest unsolved mystery in the history of Australian aviation. It surpasses the 27 years it took to find the Southern Cloud that went down over the Snowy Mts in 1931 and was not found until 1958 by a worker on the Snowy scheme. If it hadn't been for that project it might never have been found? Apparantly he was just about standing on it before he realised what it was.

This post is timely because I have just come back from a trip to the Site of the wrecked Cessna that crashed into the side of Mt Queahgong in the Blue Mts in 1968. As you can see from the photo there is still quite a bit remianing.

K.

Attachments

View from behind showing how close the pilot was to clearing the ridge.

[perfectlydark]

Now a mosquito bomber wreck would be something else!

[icefest]

Now a mosquito bomber wreck would be something else!

Empty the western victorian lakes?

[GPSGuided]

Where do you guys go to be able to come across downed planes with such regularity?!? Not as if there's one every few square km in our NPs. Amazing!

[Waipuna]

Interesting.

This plane wreck West of Gladstone in Queensland was missing for 49 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beautiful_Betsy

Brett

[icefest]

Or this WWII trainer in Lake Corangamite:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Coran ... I_aircraft

[forest]

Great work Lotsafreshair, wishing you guys luck. There sure is no shortage of *&%$#! bush up there.

Was up around Careys Peak on the long weekend and looped around to Junction Pools and over Aeroplane Hill.
There's a plaque up there near the peak listing all the planes that have crashed up on Barrington Tops, sure have been a fair few, more than I would have thought (I think there were 8 crashed listed ??)

Now a mosquito bomber wreck would be something else!

I believe it is actually one of these wrecks that "aeroplane hill" is named from. Haven't had the urge to search but there might still be some reminants up there, I think I read an engine can be found easily.

[perfectlydark]

Im actually heading to BT this weekend with dad, but sadly we wont be doing much exploring (hes not really keen on doing much more than some short trails) so unless people have been walking right past these wrecks for years, unlikely to see anything
But yeah the mossie is my favorite WWII era aircraft, to see that wreck would top off my year

[kanangra]

Forest you are quite correct. The Mosquito bomber went down on "Aeroplane Hill ". When I stumbled upon it back in the '80's there was still quite a lot to be found. I was amazed at the amount of timber in the plane's construction.

K.

[GPSGuided]

The Mosquito bomber... I was amazed at the amount of timber in the plane's construction.

That was what it was famous for in WWII and its German-radar avoidance capabilities.

[davidmorr]

Now a mosquito bomber wreck would be something else!

I believe it is actually one of these wrecks that "aeroplane hill" is named from. Haven't had the urge to search but there might still be some reminants up there, I think I read an engine can be found easily.

Yes, that's what Aeroplane Hill is named after. However, there was not much visible when I first went up there in the late 1980s. We found a few bits of metal that people had dragged out of the bush. Lots of it had been taken away as souvenirs even then, but anyhting left was very overgrown.

Nowadays, it is all overgrown, mostly with lawyer vine. Not much fun looking for remnants of the plane.

[perfectlydark]

Well apparently most of the campsites were closed due to the search this week. We were planning on staying ot Polblue anyway which was nice. Love the people that still go and light fires during a total fireban...

[MichaelJ]

Have done a couple of trips up to the Liberator bomber on Hinchinbrook Island; the poor guys ran into the top of a mountain in a storm and never knew what hit them. Fifty metres higher and they would have missed. Have also done the climb up to the B25 Mitchell on Mt Bartle Frere (Qld's highest, at one vertical mile). That aircraft disintegrated on impact, but pretty well everything is still there because it's so hard to get to (and at that height the forest never burns). Obviously at these sites the policy is to look, and pay your respects, but don't touch anything. . There's supposed to be a Kittyhawk up on Mt Elliot which nobody has ever found because it's a big mountain and the terrain is virtually impassable. There is something very sad about these sites- I don't visit them anymore.

[Mudmav]

Any news on the result from the weekend very keen to find out after that YouTube vid sparked my interest

Sent from my HTC_PN071 using Tapatalk 2

[Overlandman]

From the last post on PPrunne Forum Monday Afternoon.

Only half of the allotted search area was able to be covered in the given time. Teams reported coming up to 50 meter sheer cliff faces not marked on the map. I'm told there will be a release with other info about it shortly. Bushfires are keeping everyone on their toes!

http://www.pprune.org/pacific-general-a ... dx-15.html

Looks like the team will give it another go when the bush fires die down.

Regards Overlandman

[Overlandman]

http://au.prime7.yahoo.com/n1/video/-/w ... -continue/

Video Update from the Weekend Search
Regards Overlandman

[Lotsafreshair]

Thanks for posting that clip Overlandman. All the footage that Prime used of the squad in yellow is stuff I took whilst out in the scrub over the weekend (GoPro3+). All of our teams worked incredibly hard and well... However, I am biased in thinking that team Bushwalker 3 (go guys!) had the goods

We'll be back next year.

Feel like you want to join us in the search? Check out how to join us at http://www.bwrs.org.au.

[DaveNoble]

I can remember being on a search for that plane back in the 80's. The bushwalkers search director said that S&R had been very lucky - we had been allocated "the 90% probability zone" to search. We were driven up onto the tops - and then split into teams and started searching allocated strips of bush. We started off along a ridge, down to a river then along that to our pickup point - late the next day. Realistically we probably only searched much less than 1% of the section we had been given to search - even though we spread out as we went along the ridge. And once in the river - we couldn't spread out too much. It was a nice bush walk - but I thought a waste of time and resources. I thought there was very little chance of finding a plane in all that bush - and that has proved to be correct - the plane still has not been found. There are of course the rumours about what is in the plane - so I can see why people are still looking for it.

At the debriefing after the search, it looked like only one party had made it through its search area to the other side (our party). The search director said that there would be another search the next year - and this time he hoped the bushwalkers would be given the "100% probability zone"(!!!!)

Dave

[GPSGuided]

It's primarily a training and coordination exercise isn't it? Train on a next to impossible objective, then the real S&R will become a joyous affair when targets are found. If the search is serious for the plane, surely there's aeromagnetic survey and other techniques that could be applied before sending people in. No?

[Travis22]

Thanks for the update Lostfreshair, shame you guys didnt find it - i had my fingers crossed for everyone out there.

Dave - following the creation of this thread i spent about 10 hours over a couple of evenings scouring the internet for information on this mystery. The rumors about the planes contents would certainly be the icing on the cake to locating the plane for some people.

GPSGuided - my thoughts exactly... I cannot believe for even 1 second that 'our' military does not have the capability to locate this plane one way or another in this day and age.

Travis.

[puredingo]

We're gunna need a bigger boat.....

[Lotsafreshair]

Every year we go up to the Barringtons, we don't think of it as just an exercise. Like the video says, there are 2 main objectives.
1) The Families
2) Training
This year, we were incredibly touched to be visited by two of the families involved in this tragedy and heard first hand what the continued searching means to them.
There is always a human side to every story.

[South_Aussie_Hiker]

Flying in icing scares the cr*p out of me every day, and that's in an airliner which is approved for flight in icing conditions.

Transcript of the last 2 mins of the flight here.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JD2j4-tlmV ... D2j4-tlmVQ

Very chilling.