orchid beach resort Original Orchid Beach Resort on Fraser Island, Qld

[John Werner]

I was a friend and client of "Snow" Richards of Toowoomba, owner of Orchid Beach Resort and UnionAir and IslandAir air charter services in the 1970s and mid-1980s.  I used to fly into Orchid Beach airstrip then with Snow or his aviator son, Steve Richards, or Arthur Morris, their senior pilot and had many enjoyable times there.  The old resort was demolished in the early 2000s after beach erosion made it unsafe.  As a client, I employed Snow's charter aircraft for weekly return crew changes on the Oaky Creek and Clermont coal mine projects in Central Queensland out of Eagle Farm airport, Brisbane.  Aircraft types used were Piper Navajo Chieftain, Beech Queenair, Britten Norman Islander and Trislander, refuelling at either Thangool or Emerald.  Steve mainly was the pilot but Arthur Morris also piloted many flights.  As for Snow Richards, I recall an incident at Archerfield airport in the early 1980s with Snow doing a perfect "wheels up" landing on the grass strip in a Beech Baron with the two-blade props perfectly levelled in line with the wings using the starter motors so as to avoid damaging them upon touchdown.  Funny thing was, Snow's son Steve asked his father that night how his day had been and Snow replied "Oh, the usual".  Steve replied "You lying old bugger, I was flying the Channel Nine News helicopter over Archerfield and we got the whole incident on video tape".  I have attached some photos of the Orchid Beach airstrip.

[John Werner]

Further to the story of "Snow" Richards and his wheels-up landing at Archerfield in a Baron, I recall a similar occurrence in Rockhampton about 1974-76?.  A Piper Commanche VH-MCY suffered an engine failure over the Berserkers enroute to Great Keppel Island (GKL).  The pilot made a forced landing on the sports ground of the North Rockhampton High School and deliberately put the Piper down between the football goal posts in an effort to stop the aircraft in its tracks.  The wings were both severed upon impact from the fuselage which remained intact between the goal posts as did the pilot.  He also, like Snow, had the presence of mind to rotate the prop to the horizontal before touchdown on the footie field to minimise damage.  The Piper was operated by Country Air which was owned by Don Millroy.  Don having had a fleet of up to 14 aircraft, CountryAir would have been one of the biggest charter operations in QLD.  Other operators at the time that I recall were Coral Air (also DM?), CoddAir (Colin Codd),  Nationwide, CHAT (Emerald - Jim Johnston), Bush Pilots, Sunstate, Flight West, Longreach Air Charter (John McNamara), Sir leslie Thiess' Super King Air charter (Drayton Investments) and of course the Rockhampton Aero Club.  The pilot of the downed Piper MCY who scored that field goal was R.B. and the incident was covered in the Morning Bulletin newspaper but - no names, no pack drill.

[John Werner]

Further to the above post, I have learnt that after the PA-24 VH-MCY goal-scoring event, R.B. went on to fly VH-PTA, the Central Qld. aerial ambulance Cessna-414 Chancellor.  Then he flew for Sunstate Airlines for a while and was last known to me to be flying Boeing 777s on the Beijing route in 2013.  His father was also an aviator in the Bundaberg region up until the late 1980s.  The first Central Qld. air ambulance that I mentioned in a previous post was a short-lived Cessna 182 Skylane not a Cessna 172 as I wrote in another post.  On November 16, 1957, Rockhampton proudly received its first aerial ambulance, a shiny new Cessna 182, during an official handover ceremony at Connor Park Airport.
Tragically, on June 7, 1958, the aircraft crashed in thick scrub near Edungalba during bad weather, resulting in the loss of all four occupants on board. The aircraft was insured for £8,000 ($16,000 in 1958 which is equivalent to $310,000 today).  Note that $1 today only buys 5.18% of what it could buy in 1958 or conversely, today's prices are 19.32 times as high as average prices in 1958.  Holy inflation, Batman.