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...we were operating out of Mendi in the Western Highlands during the ‘Gammon Famine’.

We were taking food supplies from Mendi out to the villages on the West Irian border where the famine had struck hardest, (or if you want to be cynical, where the coming independence and politics dictated maximum aid had to be seen to be given to the local population).

On that particular sortie, we were carrying a load of kau kau, the leafy tuber vegetable that was the staple food for people in the area. Kau kau is a type of sweet potato and it contains a lot of water, so it could be pretty heavy. It was to be the last flight of the day, and the usual afternoon thunderstorms and heavy cloud cover were very much in evidence.

My co-pilot (in the left seat) was flying the aircraft as we crossed the saddle of the Mendi Gap heading West. There was a lot of cloud about, but mostly blue sky immediately above and ahead of us, although the clouds were pretty heavily banked up against the high ridge line immediately to our left – (i.e., very much ‘situation normal’ for the Southern Highlands at that time of day). We were carrying a pretty heavy load – I think it had been yet another ‘bouncing down the runway’ running takeoff, which were pretty much the norm out of Mendi if carrying kau kau – so we passed through the saddle quite low, maybe only fifty feet above the tops of the trees. (The terrain leading up to the Gap on its Eastern side is relatively steep, but drops away quite gently to the West.)

As we crossed the lowest point in the saddle, we both noticed an enormous bright orange orchid in the top of the tree that was immediately below us. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say it was three feet (30 centimetres) across.

It was only moments after we had passed the orchid that it happened – like a breaker at a surf beach and in about as long as it takes to say it, the clouds on the ridge line to our left just came tumbling down the hillside on to us, all the way down into the treetops. One moment we were in the clear – the next, in the gloop.

We were still quite close to the hillside to our left, so a turn to the right was our only option. XXXX kicked the aircraft into a steep turn and handed over to me, because being on the inside of the turn, I had a clearer view of the treetops. He would have been only three or four feet higher than I was in the turn, but it made a difference in how much he could see of the trees. We were in very thick cloud, and I flying on instruments, but with one eye out the right window so I could stay visual with the treetops, which were only vaguely visible and wreathed in cloud themselves, I kept the aircraft in a very steep turn as I attempted to get back the way we had come.

I hadn’t noted our exact course as we’d crossed the Gap, but I was very much aware that I really needed to turn onto the reciprocal to our original track, because the terrain rose quite sharply either side of the saddle.

As a last resort, if the turn back didn’t get us back below the cloud base, we could pull pitch and climb until we broke out on top, but at that time of day, whether we would get above the clouds was by no means guaranteed, and, I forget now what the lowest safe altitude was in that area, but it was considerably higher than 10,000 feet, and we had no oxygen. We also didn’t carry enough fuel to have instrument flight reserves – and from Mendi, it was a very long way to any navigation aids we could use to do an instrument approach. So, all in all, staying visual was by far the preferred option – although this was a lot easier said than done.

We’d just rolled out of the turn on what was more or less the reciprocal track when I saw the big orange orchid in my chin window and the moment we passed over it, I dropped the pitch lever and started a descent. We broke clear of cloud almost immediately and went straight back to Mendi and called it a day.

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, ...the Highlands of New Guinea presented some of the most demanding and challenging flying conditions likely to be encountered anywhere in the world. A deadly combination of very high, incredibly rugged terrain and treacherous weather that could deteriorate dramatically quite literally within minutes had led to the deaths of very many pilots over the years since aircraft had first started operating in the New Guinea Highlands before World War Two in support of the large gold discoveries in the area around Wau and Bulolo.

The country was so liberally littered with aircraft wrecks that pilots sometimes navigated from crash site to crash site as they made their way from one remote destination to another. To make life easier for searchers looking for a newly crashed aircraft, known wrecks were marked with large yellow crosses, and despite the very large number of known wrecks, in 1972 there were still over one thousand(!) crashed Allied aircraft scattered about the country that had never been located. That’s 1,000 Allied aircraft and does not include an unknown but large number of Japanese aircraft that never returned to their bases, many more of them lost, (just as it was for the Americans and the Australians during World War 2), to the weather and mechanical failure rather than to enemy action.

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I happen to believe the overall safety record in PNG is very good - considering the reality of day to day operations there. It just isn't possible to judge PNG operations by Australian standards.

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