Plaque honours flyers lost for 43 years

The families of missing adventure tourists Valerie Saville and Louis Rowan found resolution at Warbirds Over Wanaka at the weekend as they unveiled a memorial honouring the five people who disappeared with a de Havilland Dragonfly in Mt Aspiring National Park 43 years ago.

New Zealand captain Brian Chadwick and his passengers Louis Rowan (Australia), newlyweds Elwyn Saville (Australia) and Valerie Saville (New Zealand), and Darrell Shiels (Britain) went missing on a flight from Christchurch to Milford Sound.

The plaque has been sited at Wanaka Airport because a last possible sighting of the aircraft was made near Mt Aspiring.

Up to 25 people attended the service in the Alpine Fighter Collection hangar led by the Rev Richard Waugh of Auckland, son of the late Brian Waugh, a close friend of the missing pilot who searched for the Dragonfly for five years without success.

Brian Waugh died in 1984. He and Mr Chadwick were former Royal Air Force pilots and later pioneered commercial routes between Nelson, Ashburton, Timaru and Oamaru.

In an interview with the Otago Daily Times, Joyce McGarva, 87, of Gisborne, a sister of Valerie Saville, recalled her younger sister as a "sweet little piece" who liked to make everyone happy.

Just 22 when she disappeared, Mrs Saville was the second youngest in a family of 12 children growing up near Gisborne, of whom 10 were girls.

She had been an office worker in Sydney before marrying Elwyn Saville, who was 20 when he died.

The other Australian on the flight, 25-year-old Mr Rowan, was a cabinetmaker who worked in Papua New Guinea before coming to New Zealand for a holiday before his planned return home to Sydney.

After the Wanaka service, Richard Waugh said the dedication of the plaque and the completion of his book marked the end of a labour of love for his late father, whose search for Mr Chadwick lasted from 1962 until 1967.

"The baton was passed to me to make sure people don't forget," said Mr Waugh, the chaplain to the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators (NZ).

The plaque was designed by Graeme McConnell of Nelson. Its triangular concrete base reflects the "Bermuda Triangle" aspect of the local region, where five other aircraft have also disappeared since 1962. 


Air pizzazz thrills record crowd

A record crowd of 111,000 turned out for the 10th Warbirds over Wanaka.

The airshow's previous record was about 110,000 in 2000. The weather was mostly fine and mild, if a little overcast and drizzly on Saturday.

But that did not hamper the more than 50 aircraft and their pilots from taking wing in a display that was at times heart-stopping and deafening.

The star of the show was the Australian Air Force's F111 fighter bomber, performing from Thursday courtesy of the Australian taxpayer.

BP refuelled the F111s in Christchurch and a privately owned Hawker Hunter jet at Momona, Dunedin, and provided more than 100,000 litres of aviation gas and jet fuel for the airshow's display aircraft, as well as giving the organisers a donation.

But BP aviation manager Peter Gallen was coy about how much the show's main sponsor had spent. "They [costs] do vary a lot. It's a reasonably significant investment."

The airshow ended with a grand finale of fireworks as the "Luggate Faction", flying in Harvards, staged an "attack" before a massed fighter flypass in honour of the Year of the Veteran.

- OTAGO DAILY TIMES