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A legend of local skies | The Advocate
A true bush pilot who could land just about anywhere was remembered fondly at a memorial service in Smithton last week.
Harold Gordon ‘Bill’ Vincent OAM died on April 20 at Smithton aged 84 years.
Flying legend: Harold Gordon 'Billy' Vincent was a legend of the air and recognised with an Order of Australia Medal for his services to search and rescue. Picture: Supplied
Mr Vincent was born in Burnie on October 2, 1931, just before midnight, and the delay in paperwork saw his birth registered as October 3.
His niece Sharalyn Walters presented the eulogy at his memorial service and said that as was tradition in the family he was assigned the nickname Billy by his grandfather Burgess, and was known by it ever since.
From his early years he had a passion for flying, and would gaze skyward at anything from a tiny Tiger Moth to a Lockheed Hudson bomber which landed at Redpa in 1941.
“A defining moment in his life – young Bill was hooked. He realised his dream to fly in 1949, gaining his private pilot’s licence in September 1952,” Mrs Walters said.
“Bill’s yearning to fly coincided with meeting Brenda Edwards who also showed a keen interest in flying – and Bill Vincent. They were married in 1953 and their honeymoon was a circumnavigation flight of Tasmania. Who did that sort of thing in 1953?”
He quickly established himself as a talented pilot. It was often said that he could land a plane on a ‘postage stamp’ or drop a parcel on a spot the size of a ‘dime’.”
Mr Vincent’s extensive local knowledge led directly to his involvement in search and rescue operations from as early as the late 1950’s. Over the years he devoted long hours in the air to assist in searches for missing fishermen around the islands and in Bass Strait.
Over the years he serviced the island families of Bass Strait, and with his brothers “Doggy” and “Toddy” built a mutton birding business.
In the early 1970s he married his second wife Susan, and with her and their three children moved to Queensland for a time in the late 1980s.
In 1980 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) recognising his contribution to search and rescue in Tasmania and services to the Circular Head community.
It was while in Toowoomba he found ultra-light aircraft, and continued to fly until 2003 logging almost 20,000 hours in the air.