00:00One of the worst setbacks to early Australian commercial aviation was the disappearance of one of Sir Kingsford Smith's fleet
00:06of three-engined Fockers, the Southern Cloud.
00:09On a flight to Melbourne in 1931, it completely vanished. They searched all along the route in vain.
00:17Now, 27 years later, a worker from the Snowy Mountain hydroelectric scheme in New South Wales has found the framework
00:24of the tailed section of an aircraft.
00:25It had obviously been there for many years, and when men from the Civil Aviation Department visited the scene, conjecture
00:32soon became certainty.
00:36From the wreckage on the spot, it was established beyond doubt that a mystery of over a quarter of a
00:42century ago had been solved.
00:44This was the Southern Cloud.
00:48In 2013, seven years before the Black Summer fires ravaged the area, I visited the site of the Southern Cloud
00:56crash with High Country historian Matthew Higgins.
01:00Well, Tim, we're at the Southern Cloud crash site in the incredibly rugged upper valley of the Tooma River on
01:07the western side of Kosciuszko National Park, some of the wildest mountain country in Australia.
01:10Southern Cloud was one aircraft, part of a fleet, in a new airline launched by pioneers Kingsford Smith and Charles
01:18Ulm.
01:19And in 1931, March 1931, the aircraft was about to take off for Melbourne from Sydney.
01:26There were six passengers on board, two crew.
01:29The crew, the pilot Travis Shortridge and co-pilot Charlie Donnell, they knew they'd have windy and rainy weather to
01:36fly into.
01:36But what they didn't know was that after they took off, the Weather Bureau revised its forecast to virtually cyclonic
01:42conditions over the Australian Alps.
01:44The plane did not make it to Melbourne.
01:46And despite a huge search in succeeding weeks, it just had disappeared into thin air.
01:52Well, it did become a major aviation mystery.
01:55It was Australia's first major civil aviation disaster.
01:57And even in world terms, it was one of the longest running missing planes.
02:02Up until 1958, 27 years after the wreck, a snowy scheme worker, Tom Sontor, was doing a bit of a
02:09walk in here, taking photographs, aiming for Blackjack Mountain, a very big peak just to our north.
02:14Turned back because the country was far too rough and literally stumbled upon the aircraft wreck.
02:19And within a couple of days, police and civil aviation officials had positively identified it as this missing plane.
02:25And the mystery was solved.
02:26Well, as you can see, there's not a lot on the side because it was a huge souveniring effort in
02:30the week succeeding the discovery.
02:32But there is this memorial framed by pieces of the aircraft.
02:36There are other memorials.
02:38There's one in the main street of Cooma.
02:39There's a memorial lookout over near Tumbarumba.
02:42And there are objects from the plane held by the National Museum in Canberra and Tumbarumba Museum.
02:46But in terms of air travel, one of the recommendations after the disappearance was that radios be fitted in regular
02:54passenger flights so that changes in weather forecasts could be communicated to the air crew because there was no radio
02:59on Southern Cloud in 1931.
03:02You know, I first came here in 1984 when I was writing an article for the Canberra Historical Journal.
03:06And we actually camped up the hill here and, you know, stayed overnight, which was a very moving experience for
03:11the first time.
03:12Since then, of course, bushfires have burned through.
03:15It's become a much more difficult place to get to.
03:17But in 2008, the 50th anniversary celebrations where Tom Sonta came in with others, I was fortunate enough to be
03:25part of that.
03:25And that helped to open up the track a bit more.
03:27And we've been able to get through here today.
03:29But without the track, Southern Cloud would disappear once again.
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