23rd August 2010,
tinpis
Haere Ra Bryan.
Where do you start?
He hired me for my second stint with TAL,when I should of been off doing something useful
Hard worker tru, he introduced the Twotter to TAL which fundamentally changed the company's direction
Rest easy
wunnerful wunnerful shot tins . . . the old pella straight backed in wheel house studying the dials through the bifocals, vinyl gloved mitts characteristically resting on the top of the helm.
'The Hat' finished his book last year but the family have yet to
find a publisher. I do not think they would mind if I put the excellent James Sinclair foreword on here -
Here is the compelling account of some of the experiences of a pilot who flew extensively in many parts of the South Pacific, including Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea. He also ventured into the Caribbean and the Americas, into African, European and South East Asian skies. In the course of these air adventures he commanded an extraordinary variety of aircraft, landplanes and flying boats, military and civil; more than forty aircraft types in a flying career stretching over fifty years and some 28,000 flying hours.
The privilege of knowing Bryan was mine during his sojourn in PNG. During my long period there employed by the Australian Department of Territories as a Patrol Officer, District Officer and finally District Commissioner, sometimes native tribal emergencies flared up, the attendant urgency of which required charter of aircraft. Consequently we needed to fly into some of the more isolated parts of the Morobe District and the Highlands, ones with towering cloud enshrouded mountains, hog’s-back ridges abutting. Many such flights were with Bryan at the controls. An unforgettable one took us to the Finisterre Range and the patrol post at Wantoat, with its tiny airstrip ending at the foot of a high mountain. This harsh, mountainous country I knew well, as I’d walked over it when leading government patrols. After teeing up this particular flight with Bryan we waited several days for the weather to clear. Even so, when we did get away, as we approached the Finisterres the clouds pressed down well below the tops of the ranges in the broad Markham Valley. The low cloud and fine incessant drizzle so restricted visibility that not for a moment did I think it’d be possible to fly up the narrow valley leading to the patrol post. But we did. Without hesitation Bryan flew the Cessna low beneath the cloud as we wound our way along the valley. We flew as one would drive a car through a twisting mountain pass. My disquieting thought was ‘what on earth am I doing here?’
Another time, on a flight from Marawaka, an isolated post in a narrow valley notoriously subject to sudden weather changes, we took off from the steeply inclined strip, one of those into which you must always land uphill and take off downhill. After taking off that day the monsoonal weather caught us. This prompted Bryan to climb through the cloud to the Cessna’s performance ceiling, the limit of it’s climbing ability. As the mountains there go way up too and have been the graveyard of many good pilots, my fears could not have been greater. Bryan admitted that the flight had been a tight one for the Cessna. Only his local knowledge enabled us to climb in relative safety, top the cloud and ‘hang on the prop’ while heading for a less clouded area.
PNG has a cruel, unforgiving environment for the airman. The county’s development owes a great deal to pilots such as Bryan. He devotes, in memoriam, three pages at the end of the book listing the names of pilots he knew who died in crashes in the mountainous areas of PNG. A deal more are not listed.
Bryan was born into a farming community on the slopes of Mount Taranaki on New Zealand’s North Island. He learnt to fly with the Royal New Zealand Air Force and served with No 5 Catalina Squadron at Laucala Bay in Fiji. When the Catalinas were retired he converted to the Sunderland four-engined flying boat. Later he formed his own company, Macair Charters, based at first in the Eastern Highlands of PNG. It became successful. However, tied to a single company governed by a board of directors comprised of coffee planters, former senior public servants, accountants and pharmacists, each with his own agenda and who never saw eye to eye with him or each other, he became frustrated, restless and so moved on. His Caribbean, South China Sea and African adventures on lakes and seas in Grumman amphibians and a tour company’s Catalina make delightful reading.
Bryan’s long involvement with flying boats and his great affection for them comes through strongly in his narrative, particularly the story of his amazing flight across the North and South Atlantic in a fifty-year old Catalina. This work deserves a prominent place on the shelves of all readers of the annals of seaplanes and the web –footed men who manned them.