Nick Hopton

QANTAS has enjoyed an impeccable record of being the world’s safest airline, with no fatalities over the past 70 years.

But a Buchfelde woman has a connection to a Qantas biplane that crashed in the Golden Grove area in 1928, killing a mechanic and badly injuring the pilot.

Margaret, 83, whose father Bill Richardson had strong links with Gawler through Gawler Racing Club and the 48th Battalion in World War I, was born and grew up on her family property at Golden Grove, 10 years after the crash, close to the site of the tragedy.

A Queensland and Northern Territory Air Services (Qantas) biplane DH.50J, named Hermes, crashed in heavy fog about 9km northeast of Parafield Aerodrome and “was completely destroyed by fire”, according to The Advertiser report of Wednesday, September 5, 1928.

The aircraft’s mechanic George Nutson, 20, of Longreach, Queensland, was “severely burnt about the face and body, and died the same day”.

The pilot, English-born Captain Charles Scott, 25, also of Longreach, was badly burned trying to save Nutson and also suffered a fractured jaw, other severe facial injuries and shock but survived. He went on to have a distinguished career, winning the MacRobertson Air Race, a race from London to Melbourne, in 1934, in 71 hours.

Before 1951, Qantas recorded several other fatalities in small aircraft but none in the past 70 years, giving it the reputation as the world’s safest airline.

“Perhaps this early Qantas plane crash was soon forgotten by the general population, but it remained a talking point for the local community until at least the 1940s, when I was shown the site, by a rocky outcrop above a steep incline down to the Little Para River, the Old Spot Hotel and Salisbury,” said Margaret, who preferred not to give her surname.

“I remember viewing a barren patch of ground where nothing much grew, perhaps due to the full load of fuel and the resultant inferno.

“Nowadays, it seems incredible that the plane was allowed to take off in such foggy conditions, which must have contributed to a failure to clear the hills.

“The survival skills of the pilot are also amazing.”

Margaret said that in 1928, Golden Grove, Tea Tree Gully and Modbury were “little rural hamlets with unsealed roads most of the way to Adelaide”.

She said despite the best efforts of local farmers and a doctor, the two airmen must have suffered “unbearably painful car rides to Adelaide Hospital (now the Royal Adelaide Hospital)”.

“I can only say thank goodness for our modern-day rescue services, workers and communications,” she said. Margaret said while she and her family lived at Golden Grove, “Gawler was sort of a second home”.

“We always came up to the races,” she said. “We lost our property to the reservoir, the Little Para Reservoir, in 1977, and when we lost our property, father decided that Gawler would be the second home.”

Margaret supplied an old photo that she was given of Bishops Farm at Golden Grove, near the site of where the plane crashed.

“Reuben Richardson Road, where the homestead is now, that was my greatgreat grandfather’s name, and he owned land from Salisbury to One Tree Hill,” she said. “He got the original land grant in 1850 signed by Charles Sturt.”