The Toowoomba, Queensland newspaper
The Chronicle publish a historical photograph each week, from the Toowoomba - Darling Downs region.
Today, Monday 5 December 2011 they published the following photograph:
With the caption:
"SPRAYING TIME: Workers loading a spray plane with DDT to spray grubs in linseed crops at Pirrinuan 1956"
Pirrinuan is a small farming community about 13 miles north of Dalby, on the Dalby - Jandowae Road.
I immediately noticed the Tiger Moth carried the registration VH-WPK on the top wing and VH-WPO on the rudder.
Out of totally idle curiosity at a time I should have been working, I wondered how the aircraft ended up with two registrations; whether it was VH-WPK or VH-WPO; and who owned and operated the aircraft?
Google gives:
Ser No 84529 DH82A TIGER MOTH T8256 G-AOFG VH-AWI VH-WPK N5676 N38KH
DH82A TIGER MOTH A17-? T.113 VH-WPK VH-API
Does that perhaps indicate VH-WPK was a UK built Tiger Moth and ended up on the US FAA Registry, or Australian built Tiger Moth ending up as VH-API? (VH-API is now an RV-6). By coincidence I guess, VH-WPK is still an agricultural aircraft, a Piper PA-25-235, based at Gatton, only a few miles east of Toowoomba.
Ser No DHA129 DH82A TIGER MOTH RAAF as A17-132 T.229 VH-AQX VH-WPO
ADF Serials lists A17-132 only as:
A17-132 DHA129?
Presumable VH-WPO came to grief at some stage and was written off?
I am aware that in the post War era and into the early 1950s, a number of "pecularities" occurred with aircraft registrations!