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.

Thank you so much for this crash report, onetrack. It has cleared up a few miosconceptions that have developed over the years since, like the type of helicopter and the crash location. Captain Chas was a dear friend whom I flew with many times in PNG over the period 1970 - 1971. Apart from the many flights we had around the Musa River and Sisiworo River basins out of Safia, Chas also flew the Bell 47G-3B-2 to the top of the nearby Gorupu Mountains at an altitude of 3,078 m AMSL to drop me off for a few days' reconnaissance. Just before I exited the Bell, Captain Chas remarked that, if the engine stalled at that altitude, they would have to fly in an air compressor to restart it. Fond memories indeed of a remarkable aviator and man.

I used to fly in a Beech Baron from POM to Safia airstrip near the Musa River and Wanigela on the coast, sometimes to Tufi to refuel. The flight path took us through the Pakia Gap in the Owen Stanley Range, not the Kokoda Gap as in this post. This was in the period 1970 - 1972 in support of crew changes for Geophoto Resources Consultants exploration fly-camps with a base camp at Safia airstrip. The stream sediment sampling was carried out with the helicopter support by Helitrans of Lae with a Bell 47G-3B-2 chopper flown by Captain "Chas" Keith, a former Senior Captain with TAA in PNG mainly on Fokker Friendship F27 aircraft on the Moresby-Goroka-Mount Hagen route. Prior to that, Captain Chas was a crop duster pilot in a Pawnee in the Riverina of NSW. Unfortunately, Chas vanished on Mount Bellenden Ker in FNQ in about 1973 whilst undertaking a high-altitude test of a Bell Jet Ranger of Helitrans out of their new Cairns base as part of a Telecom transmission tower installation on the mountain. No trace was ever found of the crash site owing to the dense rainforest on the range. I have attached a photo of the Helitrans Bell 47G-3B-2 (call sign VH-PDX) that Chas Keith flew and I was a passenger in many times in PNG pictured on the ground at a helipad at Mount Hagen airport in 1971.