Once the site was found, Mac approached the Archaelogical Society, who showed them how to investigate a site, and so an archaelogical dig began on Mt Dandenong. Buried beneath the 30+ years of bush litter and mountain soil lay a watchcase, aviation instrument glass, nuts and bolts and the remains of a DC-2 passenger seat. "There was great satisfaction when we found the site without a shred of doubt," Mac said.
Back in 1929, Australian Airlines began operating in Australia, just one year after Kingsford Smith made his famous flight across the Pacific Ocean. In those days pilots cut weather maps out of newspapers in order to determine weather conditions for their flight. Radios weren't standard issue and aircraft flew at 100mph. Radios were only to become compulsory after the aircraft Southern Cloud vanished in the Snowy Mountains on flight from Sydney to Melbourne in 1931.
On October 25, 1938 when DC-2, VH-UYC Kyeema flew out of Adelaide destined for Melbourne, the passengers were onboard a new generation of high speed aircraft, flying at nearly 200mph. Airborne technology was improving rapidly, but was way ahead of the ground safety technology and systems. Air navigation was based on visual sightings and ground speed checks. Radio navigation is years away from being realised. After crossing the divide, Kyeema hit cloud in the Melbourne basin. Although the pilots were confident in their visual identification of Daylesford, they were mistaken. What they were sighting was Sunbury. They didn't do their cross-checks against the ground speed, and they were nearly 30km ahead of where they thought they were. As a result, Kyeema crashed into the western slopes of Mt Dandenong, killing its fourteen passengers and four crew, including a Federal Government minister, wine industry leaders, a couple on their honeymoon and prominent members of the legal fraternity. It is speculated that the highly experienced pilots tried to radio for bearings as they approached Melbourne, but the inadequacy of the radio system failed them. The system was jammed.
The aviation industry had been imploring the Federal Government for many years to establish a safer system of air control that could have prevented or corrected the Kyeema's navigational error. An accident was sure to happen. The government procrastinated as the kinds of changes deemed necessary were considered costly.
"A profound shock swept through the government", Mac said, "one of their own, a Government Minister, had been killed in the Kyeema air crash." Was it this that was the catalyst for air control change, I asked. "Probably," Mac said. "Both that and the subsequent enquiry that showed the government in a poor light. The publicity was extremely negative, was coming from prominent people and was unrelenting. Their were a lot of red faces in government. As with many issues of change, a tragedy and public pressure had to happen before change was implemented."
The enquiry would see the establishment of the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) and its system of air traffic control. Air flight was an elitist method of travel in the early days, something for the wealthy and influential. Perhaps it is in some way a tribute to the tragedy of Kyeema and other early air disasters like it, that Australia has such a safe record of air travel today and that it is no longer an elitist mode of transport.
At around the same time Mac became interested in Kyeema, the Mt Dandenong Historical Society had been inspired by a talk given to them by Mr Maurie Seymour, a former Shire Councillor, who had been a young man at the time of the accident and had seen the plane crash aftermath. This sparked the historical society's interest. Pat Hogan, as Secretary of the historical society, paved the way for a future meeting with Mac and their involvement in a formal tribute.
On October 25, 1978 a memorial cairn was officially unveiled, forty years after the crash and just metres from where the Kyeema finally came to rest. On this occasion, and again on the fiftieth anniversary of the crash, the children and relatives of those who died in the crash were in attendance as a now decommissioned DC-3, first flown on the week Kyeema crashed, flew overhead.
As we approach the seventieth anniversary of Kyeema on October 25, 2008 Mac and I ponder its relevance today. "The seventieth anniversary ought to be commemorated in some way," Mac says simply. "The Kyeema air disaster was the most influential event in Australian aviation history; it changed forever aviation as we knew it."
The Kyeema memorial can be found off Ridge Road, Mt Dandenong at Melway reference: 66 E1
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The enquiry that followed would see the establishment of the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) and its system of air control. It changed aviation history. Is it surprising then to learn that the disaster site was never marked or properly documented? Almost forty years later, Macarthur Job (Mac) was inspired to unearth its lost history. As we head toward the seventieth anniversary of the Kyeema air crash, it is timely to talk about Kyeema.
The story of Kyeema starts in 1938, but lets go forward a few years to 1964, when Mac was appointed to the DCA in air safety investigation. In this role, Mac had access to records of all the aircraft accidents in Australia.
In the mid 70's, someone stood at the enquiry counter of the DCA in Melbourne asking about the location of the Kyeema crash site. No-one in the Department then knew exactly where the crash site was, and the pre-war hand written records of the incident were sketchy. The only solid information was mention that the crash site was '150 yards below the summit' and compass bearings that sited it 'approx 175 yards to road'. There was no mention of which summit, or which road, and thus started Mac's interest in finding the air crash site.
At the time, Mac was editor of D.C.A's Aviation Safety Digest, and felt that this air crash deserved recognition in the way other significant air crashes had, such as the Southern Cloud air disaster in the Snowy Mountains.
A visit to the Herald and Weekly Times gave Mac some better clues, photographs published at the time showed that 'the road' was in fact Ridge Road, and they depicted what he hoped was significant and still standing, vegetation.
Mac pulled in a few friends and colleagues to investigate the accident. Over the course of the next couple of years, they undertook three expeditions to Mt Dandenong to find the crash site. The Forestry Commission became involved when they too thought 'something should be done' and contacted DCA. Things were looking up. Mac approached them with the Herald Weekly Times photo in hand. "Would this vegetation still be standing today?," he asked. The answer was "Yes." The challenge was in finding it. Needles in haystacks comes to mind! On the third expedition, they were successful, the damaged tree in the photograph was unmistakable and small pieces of the wreckage were uncovered.
