Originally published April 8, 1974
A CESSNA aircraft missing with six Melbourne people on board was found crashed on Wilkurra Station.
Wreckage of the aircraft was scattered over a comparatively small area at the base of a 30 foot high tree.
The bodies of the pilot and five passengers were close by.
The wreckage was four miles due south of the Wilkurra shearing shed, 65 miles north east of Mildura and about 40 miles east of the course the Cessna was expected to take.
The Cessna, a twin-engine 310H, was on a flight from Broken Hill to Melbourne.
It disappeared at a time when thunderstorms were over Wilkurra and over the stations between the proposed route of the Cessna’s flight and the crash site.
Indications were that the plane had plunged into the ground nose first and at terrific speed.
The forward section of the fuselage was destroyed and the cabin was split in two.
Parts of the aircraft panelling were scattered up to 250 metres south-south-west of the main part of the wreckage.
A theory put forward by experienced pilots was that the pilot of the Cessna had lost control of the plane in cloud and that it had gone into a spin.
They said the reason why he was 40 miles off course could have been because of attempts to try to get around thunderstorms.
Planes in the search had logged more than 550 search hours and had flown 200 separate sorties over 40,000 square miles up to the time the wreckage was found.
About four miles of almost inaccessible scrub, landfills and deep water holes lay between the wreckage and the nearest track.
And even most of the tracks are waterlogged after rain of the past two days.
Police are preparing to remove the six bodies by helicopter.
