Sad farewell to famed bush pilot Dick Lang and son Dr Clayton Lang after KI bushfire tragedy
An Outback legend and his surgeon son have been laid to rest in Adelaide after losing their lives together during Kangaroo Island’s terrible bushfires.
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The best way to avoid one of Dick Lang’s Monday morning maths lessons was to ask him how his weekend adventure went.
Known as “Richie” to his family, and Dick to friends, the famous South Australian bush pilot was widely known for his larger-than-life personality and sense of adventure.
At the age of 78, he was taken too soon, alongside his youngest son Clayton, 43, while fighting a ferocious bushfire near their Kangaroo Island hobby farm earlier this month.
In an emotional funeral service today that overflowed outside, Dick’s son Justin said: “He loved doing what he did, travelling and showing people the Outback, telling people interesting stories on the way.”
Justin heard from a former Norwood High student about the adventurous route to escape Dick’s maths lessons.
In 1974, Dick gave up teaching to pursue his love of adventure full-time through his 4WD safari company Desert-Trek.
He gained his commercial pilot’s licence, despite his colour blindness, and branched off into air safaris.
There seemed to be nothing that Dick couldn’t overcome. With chemotherapy, he won a battle against a vicious strain of multiple myeloma in the late ’80s, before starting safaris in Africa in the early ’90s.
The family would take frequent trips to Papua New Guinea, and Dick’s son Lachlan remembered flying among the cloudy Highlands and meeting the Asaro Mudmen.
“I will be forever grateful for him instilling in me a sense of adventure and an appreciation of the wonders of nature,” Lachlan said at the funeral.
Meanwhile, Justin remembers his father giving exotic cheeses from King Island to air traffic controllers in exchange for priority landing.
Dick’s son Clayton, or “Clarrie”, was also remembered on Friday as someone who “sucked the marrow out of life”.
A keen skydiver and rally driver, Clayton enjoyed “taking things to the extreme”, Lachlan said. “You could say he died as he lived.
“I’m sure that pedal was to the metal in their hasty retreat from the fires and that adrenaline was pumping. But it was a race they tragically lost.”
Clayton was one of Adelaide’s top plastic surgeons and contributed to both private and public health sectors.
“Clarrie leaves behind two beautiful little girls … I’m just so heartbroken for them because they’ve lost their daddy for good,” Lachlan said.
“Perhaps we can take some small comfort in the knowledge Clarrie definitely lived a full life in his 43 years.”
“He not only sucked the marrow out of life, he then gave a dog that bone, then went back for seconds and maybe some dessert too. Taken too soon, love you bro.”
Supporters at the funeral placed sprigs of bluegum on Dick and Clayton’s coffins.
