A Gloucester resident is holding out hope of locating a 30-year-old Cessna C210 crash site from Australia's only civil aviation incident that remains unsolved.
The Gloucester Advocate reports this week that local retiree Don Readford continues to focus his efforts on locating the wreckage site, somewhere in the Barrington Tops, NSW, from the puzzling incident that has now gone unsolved for three decades. Before retiring and moving to Gloucester 11 years ago, Readford held a flight crew licence for 25 and is familiar with Cessna types.
Shortly before 2000 on August 9, 1981, a Cessna C210 registered VH-MDX and carrying four passengers crashed in the Barrington Tops while enroute from Coolangatta to Bankstown Airport. All four pax, as well as pilot Michael Hutchins, died in the crash, but despite an extensive search at the time and numerous further searches in the years since, the C210 has never been found.
Marking 30 years to the day since the incident, the Gloucester Advocate reports that Readford has spent more than seven years researching material and information associated with the crash and in conjunction with barrister Gary Donovan has put together a detailed analysis of the events that unfolded that night.
Readford was at Bankstown Aero Club, where VH-MDX was based, on the night the aircraft disappeared.
“I went to have a few drinks at the bar and an announcement was made at the club that a plane stationed at the Aero Club was in difficultly and believed to have crashed in the Barrington Tops,” Readford told the Gloucester Advocate.
When Don retired to Gloucester around 11 years ago he said a chance meeting with Norm Bignell, where they got talking about the crash, re-kindled his interest in the events of that night.
He said information that he received from Bignell and also from Brian Holstein and then contact with former Newcastle police rescue squad chief Peter Anthorpe started the quest for answers.
Readford and Donovan interviewed witnesses from the local area who had either seen or heard the plane and have released their findings in a publication called Operation Phoenix, the theoretical search for the crash site of the Cessna 210. The pair plan on submitting their research to the Department of Air Transport.
Readford told the Gloucester Advocate that the failure to locate the C210 in the years since the crash is nothing short of a tragedy and he hopes that one day the wreckage is located to bring closure to the families of those on board who died.
“The hope of finding MDX has not been fulfilled as yet, but the dream ‘of closure’ still abides with all concerned,” he explains.
Readford advises that anyone with a genuine interest in getting involved in the search for VH-MDX should contact the National Parks and Wildlife office in Gloucester and register their names with Gloucester Police before attempting any search operation.
Don Readford looks through press coverage of the disappearance and searches for the Cessna 210 that crashed on August 9, 1981.
