By Garry Howe
“We felt sick. We had envied them. We wanted to change places with them.“
A GROUP of three men from country New South Wales envied the Bunyip five as they took off from Ayers Rock on 27 December 1967 in their Cessna bound for Alice Springs and then Darwin.
A few days later, journalist Mike Giuliano and his travelling buddies Clyde Hodgins and Dale Goodman were mourning their new mates.
The two travelling parties were covering pretty much the same ground on their Northern Australian adventures – with one major difference.
While the Bunyip boys flew between destinations, the others had travelled from the country New South Wales town of Young in a beaten up Valiant Regal.
By the time they reached Ayers Rock on Boxing Day, they were in a spot of bother.
They had punctured the petrol tank on a rock, only 40 minutes after filling up with petrol at Mt Ebenezer and were hours behind schedule when they limped into the tourist town.
Dale Goodman was an engineer for the Chrysler Motor Company and had patched the tank using part of Mike’s leather belt and bits and pieces from Clyde’s first aid kit.
It was well after dark when they got to the rock and found accommodation at the Redline Motel, where six men around the same age emerged from the rooms.
One group was well dressed in shorts, long socks, checked shirts and looking pretty refreshed. The others were covered in dust, their clothes filthy and looking like they had been to the end of the earth.
They quickly struck up a friendship, Mike the journalist later explained in an article published in Young’s Monday News Magazine under the headline ‘Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machine’.
“We introduced ourselves all round, first names only. Surnames could come later,” Giuliano wrote.
“There was Mike (and with the same name as my own we hit it off perfectly), a handsome, sun-tanned Aussie Rules football coach; Don, a blonde, semi-fair skinned happy-go-lucky owner of a country newspaper in Victoria; Peter, who looked the oldest of the six (and not more than 30) who was a buyer for Nestle; Noel, a PMG technician and round faced and quiet and Barry, a fair-haired good looking school teacher.
“Youngest looking of them all was Peter, the pilot, who at 24 (sic) had notched up a sizeable number of flying hours. The pilot’s surname was the first to come out. Limon – a combination of lemon and Simon.
“We asked where they came from. There was dead silence. Finally, ‘Bunyip’ said one. ‘Have you heard of it’, another said anxiously. Both Dale and I answered ‘Yes it’s near Melbourne’. If there was any ice to be broken, that did it.
“Little did they know that people Australia-wide would know of Bunyip, through them, in three days’ time.”
Giuliano wrote that the Bunyip boys were looking forward to Surfer’s Paradise, the Great Barrier Reef and the islands off Queensland. By the time they were due home, they would have notched up in excess of 8000 miles.
The two groups talked about their trips and a bit of banter ensued over the relative hardships involved.
“After that day’s events, we were quick to tell them ‘One thing about flying, you can’t hole your petrol tank on a rock’,” Giuliano wrote.
“Dale put his beer down and said ‘I envy you guys. Here we were today bouncing over rough roads with a temperature of 120 degrees in a moving car. We hit holes in the road you couldn’t see for dust and nearly went through the roof. We had a bit of trouble, which held us up for hours in the boiling heat. Meanwhile, you guys wing your way overhead, cool as you like’.”
The journalist chimed in: “Think of us tomorrow as we bounce and boil on our way to Adelaide over 1200 miles of rough dirt road and bulldust while you fly to Alice in comfort.”
They talked about how lucky the Bunyip boys were and asked to swap places. The pilot said that if they were serious he would fly them for nothing if they paid the cost of the plane hire.
The journalist drank with Mike Breheny, Peter Kay and Don Smith until the early hours of the morning.
By 2am, they were the only ones in the bar and the publican came over. He overheard Mike Breheny saying how they all came to be on the trip – that Peter Limon was flying them to get more hours up.
“You might think you’re having a cheap trip, but Ayers Rock is a dangerous area to fly in,” the publican warned. “There are many crashes here because inexperienced pilots get caught in sudden downdraughts.”
Giuliano wrote that Breheny leapt to the pilot’s defence.
“Peter’s flown here three times before,” Breheny told the publican. “He’s a very good pilot, always spot on in his navigation, and he always fills the tanks whenever he lands. He plots a course which gives him twice as much fuel in his tanks as he needs for extra safety.”
‘You’re lucky,” the publican replied. “Some pilots we get here aren’t as careful or experienced.”
Breheny said the only anxious moment they had was when they arrived at Ayers Rock, because the light was failing and the plane was not equipped for night flying.
“Peter made a perfect landing. Unfortunately there was no-one there to see it. Not like one of the other places where he bounced us a bit and received catcalls from those other on the airfield.”
At 2.30am they made their way back to their motel rooms. A few got up to watch the sunset over the rock and went back to bed.
They met again over breakfast at the motel – where the difference in dress was again stark.
“We had become landlubbers in our filthy clothes,” Giuliano wrote. “The boys from Bunyip looked ‘pukka’ in their shorts, long socks etc.
“A few words were exchanged about their early morning calls and we again wished we were going with them.
“We shook hands as they got into the small Redline coach to go to the airport. Later, as their plane flew overhead, I went out on to the porch of the motel and waved. Peter Limon put the Cessna in a turn, climbed and dived straight over my head, opened the throttle and headed to Alice Springs.
“A couple of hours later, we had a flat tyre on the way back to the so-called ‘highway’ that heads back to Adelaide. We cursed our absence of luck as we changed the wheel.
“We thought of the lucky blokes who would have already touched down at Alice Springs and civilisation while we tussled with a red-hot wheel. Later, as our troubles mounted even higher, we thought of them again and again.
“How we envied them as bulldust choked us and the temperatures soared.
“It wasn’t until we reached the safety of Adelaide that we heard that a single-engine plane, with six young men on board, was missing.
“We looked at each other. Surely not…
“That afternoon, the Adelaide News confirmed our direst thoughts.
“We felt sick. We had envied them. We wanted to change places with them.
“Any fond memories of that trip were washed away with the blood of those men, whom I knew for a few hours, yet at the time felt I had known for years.”
Mike Giuliano and his wife attended the unveiling of a memorial stone in memory of the five Bunyip men in July the following year.
Read more
[ Trip revives crash heartache ]
[ The twists and turns of final hours ]
[ ’Those magnificent men in their flying machine’ ]
[ Four states for mates ]
