Sunday 16 June 2019

Leader: Rodney Hopkirk

In the hills behind Waikanae is the remains of an Airspeed Oxford which crashed in November 1941 into the side of Mt Maunganui. It has been visited many times by the club so I wasn’t expecting huge numbers but it’s a trip with a bit of local history and handy to home, so consequently ended up with 8 on the list.

We began by crossing the Maungakotukutuku Stream and climbed for about 2 hours to Mt Maunganui. Just passed the Mt Maunganui summit and off to the right is a small clearing, with expansive views over the Akatarawas and beyond to Hector and looking south, into the Wellington harbour, perfect for lunch.

It was sunny but quite breezy and cool and we didn’t stay long at the lunch spot. We continued along the ridge for another 20 minutes and turned right away from the main track. We followed a less defined track but along the same ridge line, then descended a spur to the left and into the valley below.

Neville managed to guide us straight to the site of the wreck, with minimal detours and back tracking, thanks largely to the GPS and the fact he’s been there several times before.

We explored around for a bit, finding a motor, parts of the fuselage and bits of wing, before heading for home. We had a brief stop on the way back to the fence line track, but once we had joined back up to the fence line track, everyone was keen to complete the circuit and get back to the cars. We walked down past the dilapidated adventure playground, back across the stream and back up the road, arriving at the cars at about 4.00pm.

For more history of this crash go to the Plane Crash page on this website at Plane Crashes

Those on the trip were:

Rodney Hide, Eva Petro, Tim Allott, Neville Grubner, Elizabeth Hynes, John Rowland, Wayne Williams, Brandon Holman

No photo album was created for this trip.