Moderator's Oath, John: The majority of the yarns in here are true and the rest are the stuff legends are made of!
This thread began on 18 November 2004 and I suspect is the longest continuous running thread on PPRuNe. To this post there have been 2,699 posts and 241,388 views - an average 1.367 posts and 122 views per day!
Tinny's yarn reminds me of Crowley and Stockton when they operated a Tiger Moth and a Curtis Robin ex Lae around the very early 1960s. Stockton flew the DH84 up the Markham to collect a load of potatoes from (I think) Kaiapit, for Lae. Overloaded, he ended up in the top of a coconut palm, climbed down and hitched back to Lae where he drowned his sorrows in Ma Stewart's Huon Gulf Hotel. The search party found the aircraft and searched for Stockton for three days before he was discovered blotto at the Huon Gulf Hotel!
I wonder if old Laurie Crowley is still alive? Last heard from he was at Camden still operating Crowley Airways but that was a few years ago.