This article was first published in the Tararua Tramper Volume 90, no 10, November 2018
Lodestar Crash Site
Wednesday 26 September 2018
We were 13 persons (12 TTCs and one non-member) leaving various parts of Wellington in four cars and arriving at the start of the Te Au Track (northern access to Hemi Matenga route) off Huia Street by 8.30am in beautiful weather.
We headed up the track to the ridge then along to the north in the bush and onto the forestry roads, where we had great views out over Kapiti. We took the first left fork and then turned right at the next junction. Moving up the road until under point FIELD on which there is a police radio mast.
While two of the party waited, the remainder headed down into the bush from the mast, on a route to find the remains of the Lockheed Lodestar. This we, at first, overshot until a plethora of phone and GPS operators had us back on track. At the crash site there is still quite an amount of aircraft debris, even almost 70 years after the event. After inspecting and photographing it we moved back up to the vicinity of the mast for lunch.
Then it was retracing our steps back to the vehicles but not before one group went too far down the forestry road towards Hadfield Road. A little bit of back tracking and all finally reached the road end by about 4.30pm.
An interesting coincidence was that 13 on trip was the same number as passengers killed in the crash – there were also two crew killed.
- Party members
- Bob Buckle, Robin Chesterfield, Bernadette Clarke, Mike Crozier, Helen Gray, Paddy Gresham,
Alan Knowles, Howard Larsen, Peter Morten, John Thomson, Bill Wheeler, Glynn Woodbury,Alan Wright (leader and scribe)