Bill Vincent Bush Pilot
Thread Starter
Does anyone operate out of Smithton or has the locals pronounce it Mifton these days to the Bass Strait Islands?
Is Heather Innes still around in that part of the world?
Is Heather Innes still around in that part of the world?
If you like bill vincent's book, you'll love another called 'flying doctor' by clyde fenton...auto-biography...NT in the 30's and 40's in a fox moth...he got away with some pretty hairy stuff too...on one occaision, he flew, (illegally), to hong kong in the fox thru monsoon storms DR'ing it all the way, (which can't have been easy as he seemed to spend the vast majority of the time in coud, not to mention no AI)...and he talks at length about the hillarious on-going battle he had with the then CAA...some things never change i guess! It's even funnier as it's written in a formal 'queens english' style of the times. Are we all soft these days!? Pprune book club review 10/10....
Hate to be pedantic but it was a DH60 Gipsy Moth. (Clyde wanted VH-IOU on one of them, but had to settle for VH-UOI.
From a recent thread about "Good reads" -
Katherine was home base for Dr Clyde Fenton, ca 1934-1939. He was a one man band medico/pilot in his succession of DH Moths, for Clyde had a great propensity for walking away from crashes, immediately resuming the fund raising for his next one. Clyde's "Flying Doctor" is one of the funniest books of it's kind ever published. One time on a stinking hot day he took off from DN for KT. In the front was the KT hospital matron. After an hour or so bouncing around Clyde was concerned to see her head and shoulders moving round vigorously. No voice tube and no radio needless to say.
Clyde hands her a note "You alright?"
Back comes matron's note. "Yes. I am now thank you. Now that I've got my blessed corsets off."
Hard book to come by. The Central Australian Air Museum in ASP had a few copies recently. Contact Perry Morey. (He, incidentally, is an authority on the life of the late Clyde. Has an unpublished bio.)
Clyde hands her a note "You alright?"
Back comes matron's note. "Yes. I am now thank you. Now that I've got my blessed corsets off."
Hard book to come by. The Central Australian Air Museum in ASP had a few copies recently. Contact Perry Morey. (He, incidentally, is an authority on the life of the late Clyde. Has an unpublished bio.)
THEY ARE ROUND AND THEY BOUNCE.
FENTON.
I know Bill Vincent
This is a bit late for the thread but I just came across it today. I flew with Bill many times when I was a partner in a small bush mining operation in Tasmania. Like many people on the NW of the island (and the islands offshore) at the time we could hardly have survived without his kindness, help and loyalty. Many's the box of mutton birds he dropped off at our airstrip and many the newspapers he "posted" out of the Cessna window as he flew over our mine on his way to Interview River!
I had some very memorable flights with him but I'll keep the details to myself for the moment. I would dearly love to get hold of the book about him and I'd appreciate any leads in this respect.
I believe Bill (we always knew him as Billy) is now back living in Tasmania after some years spent in on the big island. I wish him a happy old age!
Roy
(latterly of Specimen Hill Tin)
I had some very memorable flights with him but I'll keep the details to myself for the moment. I would dearly love to get hold of the book about him and I'd appreciate any leads in this respect.
I believe Bill (we always knew him as Billy) is now back living in Tasmania after some years spent in on the big island. I wish him a happy old age!
Roy
(latterly of Specimen Hill Tin)
Well, I don't think this is the time, and probably not the place, to tell too many shaggy dog stories...
I wonder if there's anything in the book about Bill flying frisky sheep across Bass Strait? Some of them even arrived, I believe.
Or the unusually large number of spare spark-plugs he used to habitually carry in his overalls?
Or the number of his take-offs and landings on an average day during the Mutton Bird season?
Or the condition of Merv's "airstrip" at the Interview River - where I once landed with Bill carrying provisions: a couple of loaves, a case or two of beer, a (terrified) dog, a cat (in a sack in the pod) and two dozen cases of AN60 gelignite; we left the dets back at Smithton - even Billy wasn't that brave. The airstrip was just an E/W line of partly flattened buttongrass over which someone had run a D7 up and down a couple of times. The windsock was a fertiliser sack tied to a stripped gumtree. I have never known an aircraft decelerate so quickly.
As I said already he was our lifeline. In winter he used to break 44s of diesel down into smaller drums so that he could get two of them into the plane (one intact and one broken down). We would often leave a message on a logging channel and Bill would do an emergency shop for us. For the pittance he charged us we are all indebted to him.
When a fishing boat went missing and the weather was cr@p, it was usually Bill who they called to go out searching, no matter what kind of hard time the CAA was currently giving him.
A great guy, and possibly one of very few "old, bold" pilots.
That's enough from me for the moment. I could be making it all up anyway, that's what the internet's for isn't it?
I wonder if there's anything in the book about Bill flying frisky sheep across Bass Strait? Some of them even arrived, I believe.
Or the unusually large number of spare spark-plugs he used to habitually carry in his overalls?
Or the number of his take-offs and landings on an average day during the Mutton Bird season?
Or the condition of Merv's "airstrip" at the Interview River - where I once landed with Bill carrying provisions: a couple of loaves, a case or two of beer, a (terrified) dog, a cat (in a sack in the pod) and two dozen cases of AN60 gelignite; we left the dets back at Smithton - even Billy wasn't that brave. The airstrip was just an E/W line of partly flattened buttongrass over which someone had run a D7 up and down a couple of times. The windsock was a fertiliser sack tied to a stripped gumtree. I have never known an aircraft decelerate so quickly.
As I said already he was our lifeline. In winter he used to break 44s of diesel down into smaller drums so that he could get two of them into the plane (one intact and one broken down). We would often leave a message on a logging channel and Bill would do an emergency shop for us. For the pittance he charged us we are all indebted to him.
When a fishing boat went missing and the weather was cr@p, it was usually Bill who they called to go out searching, no matter what kind of hard time the CAA was currently giving him.
A great guy, and possibly one of very few "old, bold" pilots.
That's enough from me for the moment. I could be making it all up anyway, that's what the internet's for isn't it?
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Hobbit
Posts: 37
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
.... thread creep I know but I reckon with your obvious knowledge of the area you might know the answer.
Do you know the story behind the bits 'n pieces of plane wreckage in behind Sandy Cape? From memory a wing panel or two, a few frames & skin sheets etc. strewn about. It looks like there could have been a strip in there a looong time ago...
Do you know the story behind the bits 'n pieces of plane wreckage in behind Sandy Cape? From memory a wing panel or two, a few frames & skin sheets etc. strewn about. It looks like there could have been a strip in there a looong time ago...
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: The 'Bat Cave' @ HLP in the Big Durian Indo
Age: 61
Posts: 781
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I Remember seeing one of his 205/6? land at King Island one day and the pilot taxing in with lots and lots of power against brake.... only to see it fall on its tail as soon as he shut the engine down....We all went over to see what was wrong only to find about 20 goats tightly sqeezed into the back and the pilot looking red-faced saying ....."your not from the C.A.A. are you"???
No idea. But at least one pilot ignored Bill's advice not to land on west coast beaches (something that Bill did habitually!) and took a twin in that never made the trip back out. Don't recall the location though.
Join Date: May 2011
Location: Launceston
Posts: 1
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Bill Vincent
Hi to all the pilots who were discussing the Bill Vincent back in 2009. I came accross this website while I was looking for copies of Bill Vincent Bush Pilot to purchase, they are no longer in print and hard to find. I am Bill Vincent's youngest daughter and showed dad the conversation. He is computer illiterate and so I have joined on his behalf (hopefully I will be able to teach him how to do it himself but he is just shy of 80 and not all thay keen to learn). Dad is interested in hearing from anyone he has previously known an lost track of but also others who wish to talk to him. Please email your details to [email protected] for me to pass onto him.
Thanks
Thanks
