40 Years on: Remembering the oil riggers, pilot killed in Adavale plane crash
Four decades after a plane fell out of the sky, instantly killing all 12 on board, the man who found the wreckage has broken his silence on the fateful night that haunts him to this day, and the search for the truth.
Toowoomba
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Every morning, David McCabe wakes up haunted.
Harrowing memories fill his mind of the moment he guarded a plane wreckage from wild dogs after it crashed into the barren land of remote Queensland.
This has been the tragic daily occurrence for David, decades after he was one of the first people to arrive on the scene of what became known nationally as the Adavale plane crash.
On August 28, 1983, a Beechcraft 200 Super King Air that had been carrying 11 oil riggers and a pilot crashed about 200km northwest of Charleville.
All of the men on board, aged between 21-50, perished in the crash.
Four decades on, and the 12 families of the crash victims, David and air crash investigators remain puzzled by how flight VH-KTE broke apart midair and descended into a death spiral on its trip back home to Toowoomba from Windorah.
Monday evening, will mark 40 years since David and other members of the small Adavale community were gathered together for a barbecue and tennis match on a clear autumn night when they heard a series of loud explosions in the distance.
(After photos? Keep scrolling to view the gallery.)
Armed with a torch, David and another local accompanied the town’s only police officer to investigate what they presumed was a truck rollover on the Quilpie-Adavale Rd.
But after a short walk off the road into nearby bushland they uncovered something far worse among the mulga trees.
Just after 10pm they stumbled across the fiery wreckage of flight VH-KTE.
“We went straight to the fire. There was one wing of the plane and one wheel on fire,” David said.
“The tip of it was up through the trees. We drove a bit further and found a motor and then the tail.
“I said we’ve got to keep looking for the fuselage.
“I picked up a bit of glimmer and we went over, and it was the fuselage. In one place upside down, tail missing, wings missing.
“First up I was wondering ‘has anyone survived?’ When we got to the plane there was no noise, we called out, there was no noise.
“The door was off the fuselage, it had sprung open. A body was lying on the door, the others were inside, luckily.
“The local policeman and myself sat with the plane all night. We had to walk around the plane every 10 minutes and guard the fuselage to make sure no wild pigs or dogs got into the bodies.
“It was sad, but things have got to happen, and someone’s got to step up.
“You’ve just got to tune it out, something’s got to be done.”
While David and the officer stayed with the wreckage, the others activated flares on the airstrip to let the Royal Flying Doctor Service know where they were.
“They only got 100km east of Windorah in Adavale, so they would’ve only got (to) about 27,000 feet and then started to cruise into Toowoomba,” he said.
“Whatever went wrong, it tumbled and broke up.”
A long 15 hours later, David and other emergency responders were finally able to secure a grader to roll over the fuselage and retrieve the bodies the following afternoon.
“We rolled the fuselage over and opened her up and got the bodies out, they were all deceased by then of course,” he said.
“We had to put them in body bags.
“There was no power or power tools back then, this was 40 years ago, the only way to open the fuselage up was to get an axe and split it once we rolled it over.
“We split the middle on the top and peeled it back to get the bodies in the plane.
“Some of the bodies were unrecognisable and had to be identified by their wallets.
“They wouldn’t let the victims’ (families) see those bodies.”
Flashbacks, haunting images and ongoing bouts of depression still plague David who spent a gruelling 20 hours on scene calling for help, guarding the crash site and eventually removing the victims from the plane.
40 year anniversary gathering
On Sunday more than 80 family members of the victims as well as David will descend on Adavale for the official unveiling of the new memorial at the Town Hall to mark the anniversary on Monday, August 28.
The new memorial, which bears the faces of the men lost and a description of what happened, started as an ambitious plan six years ago that finally came to fruition thanks to the dedication of a local historian and two family members.
Check out the photo gallery from the 40 year anniversary gathering below.
Adavale plane crash 40 year anniversary tribute
When Charleville historian Craig Murray visited the old memorial at the crash site in Adavale, his interest was piqued when he spotted the marble monument with 12 names inscribed on it.
Curious to know more about how the monument got there and why, he made a post on Facebook inquiring about the crash and two family members of the victims, Di Pannach and Ingrid Duane, responded and a plan was hatched.
“I was sitting at the old memorial up near the crash site and I thought ‘gee it’d be a real shame if we didn’t find out a bit more about these boys while we can’,” Craig said.
“On a lot of these old headstones, they say ‘gone but not forgotten’, but we all know these things get forgotten.
“I found it incredibly sad, this lonely memorial with an insignificant sign pointing to the crash site. It had started to lose its paint, weeds were overgrowing it.
“At the time it had only been 34 years since the tragedy and I thought ‘no, come on, let’s do something about this’.
“As a country we’ve lost too much of our history, a lot of our history gets thrown out in shoeboxes and taken to the dump.
“I thought ‘I’m going to attempt to contact someone to see if we can create a more personal memorial’. I wanted to know what they look like, who they were.
“I said I’d like to do something a bit more personal, mind you it was an idea, but these two ladies did all the investigative work.
“I’m really pleased with what these two ladies have pulled off.”
Craig said he was quite emotional in the lead up to this weekend after having spent the past six years of his life working closely with the victims’ families to bring the vision to life.
“This is going to heal a few wounds, I think, bring a bit of closure,” he said.
“It may reopen a couple of wounds for some people, we’re all different.
“I think we are going to come out of this as lifelong friends.
“I was fearful this tragedy was going to disappear in the pages of history, but now this tragedy will always be remembered.”
Craig’s interest in the crash stems from his connection to Adavale on his mother’s side of the family.
“I used to visit Adavale every school holiday, and I loved listening to the old timers’ stories.
“I left to go exploring the city for 20 years, and when I came back to Adavale, it was a shock to see those old timers and their memories gone.
“That’s what got me into recording pioneering and Indigenous history 15 years ago.
“Western Queensland has punched more than above its weight to forge our nation’s identity.
“I’m not doing it for an ego, I do it because I love doing it.”
For the first time in six years, organiser Di Pannach and Craig met in person as she was travelling through just days before the official unveiling of their monument.
Di lost her brother Stephen John Kirwan in the crash and has dedicated her life to preserving the legacy of those lost in the disaster.
“He was 21 years old, engaged and I’ve always stayed close to his fiancee, we’re like sisters,” she said.
“We lived in Toowoomba at the time, and at 2am there was a knock on the door … it was the police, and I could still see them standing at the front door, but I can’t remember what my reaction was when they told me.
“Our main concern was mum and dad lived in Charleville at the time, and my dad was not real well.
“We didn’t want the police to get to them before we did.”
So within the hour, Di had knocked on her boss’ door to borrow some cash for fuel and hit the road west with her siblings.
“It was a really weird time, the focus was looking out for mum and dad.
“Everyone was pretty dazed, yeah it was a rough time.
“I think to myself, you can’t change time and when it’s your time.
“I do know some people are still very angry about it.
“I’ve said to everyone, the family members of all those boys, as long as I’m alive, those boys will never be forgotten.”
Searching for truth
Forty years and a 28 page investigation later, David and the 12 families of the victims are left with unanswered questions and still wondering why and how.
How does a mechanically sound plane operated by an experienced pilot with more than 4000 flying hours simply fall out of the sky?
The Bureau of Air Safety Investigation published its report two years after the crash in 1985, and despite shipping the engines to Canada for analysis, no apparent reason has ever been identified for what caused the plane to break up midair.
According to the investigation, the first noise that sounded like thunder that was heard by the group of local farmers would have been the in-flight break-up and the following noise would have been the aircraft hitting the ground.
“Despite the detailed and extensive investigation there is no firm evidence to indicate the circumstances which led to the in-flight break-up of the aircraft,” the report said.
“No pre-existing defect was found in the engines, airframe or components likely to have led to the break-up.”
The report concluded that shortly before reaching Adavale, the pilot lost control of the aircraft “for reasons unknown” which sent the plane into a “rapid descent” from about 7000 feet high.
“High aerodynamic loading occurred which resulted in failure of the wing spar and break-up of the airframe. However, the wing attachment bolts and their fittings did not fail.”
The report ruled that while the plane was not required to carry a voice recorder or flight data recorder on board, if the aircraft had been equipped with these devices the “valuable information recorded would have considerably enhanced this investigation”.
The wreckage spanned across a giant debris field with the wind carrying pieces of padding from the interior of the plane more than 3km away into the Adavale township, including in the police station yard.
“You wonder why. Apparently they had three coroners investigate that plane crash, and they can’t find out what was wrong with it,” David said.
“Wondering why and what happened. Questions that haven’t been answered, and someone should know. I think we should be able to find out what happened.
“The families haven’t got closure.
“It’s 40 years now, it won’t bring them back, but I think the truth should be told. To give them closure.
“They sent a motor overseas apparently and they said everything was okay. Why that tyre caught on fire that night is a mystery.
“If the fire hadn’t have started we wouldn’t have gone out there. It was only the fire that drew us there.”
Haunted decades later
Decades later the memories of that night still remain with David, who wakes up every morning with the crash always the first thing on his mind.
“I wouldn’t talk about it for a long time after. I never read the newspaper cuttings or the statement I put out (to police),” he said.
“It brings back memories all the time, I think about it enough without reading it.
“Sleep is the main thing, I wake up at 3-4am every morning and it’s the first thing you think of.
“I hear a plane flying over, and I think ‘keep up there, don’t fall down here’.
“I hate getting on planes to fly anywhere. I know you don’t get in a car to crash, I know pilots don’t get in their plane to go and crash, but it’s just …”
In the days and weeks following the crash, David developed an unexplained fear of the dark, and to this day lives with constant reminders of what he endured in those 20 hours on the scene in the barren land among the mulga trees.
“I couldn’t go in the dark. At night, I had to go turn the generator off, and I’d get up to the back steps and just freeze and couldn’t go further when the light ran out.”
He can no longer ride his motorbike without getting spooked by the loud noise and cannot go into shopping centres without getting a whiff of the same aftershave worn by one of the victims.
“There must’ve been an aftershave on the plane as well, because I’ve been in a couple of shopping centres, the last one was Melbourne, and you get the smell of that aftershave and you’re transported right back.
“I talk about it more now, I think it does help when you can talk about it.
“Some people listen, some people don’t want to listen, but I think it’s better if you don’t bottle it up inside you.”
Born in Charleville and now living on a property in Chinchilla, David has lived his whole life in western Queensland and says relying on each other is “a way of life out in the west”.
“You help each other in the bad times and good times – you’ve got to rely on each other.
“There was no counselling back then, just harden up.
“I don’t know whether it eases. It’s there all the time.
“When you go through something like that, it is hard to go back and bring memories back into your life of the hurt you went through.
“You can’t just not think about it, it comes back. You’ll hear something or see something and you’ll go straight back.
“If I hear ‘plane crash’ or ‘plane goes missing’ I go straight back.
“The images and the photos and everything else are still in your mind, they take a long time to get them out of your system if you ever do.
“You don’t realise (how it will affect you) when you’re there. I don’t tell my wife why I wake up every morning or what I’m thinking.”
David has never met any of the families of the victims but hopes meeting with them at the memorial unveiling will bring closure.
“I’ve talked to a couple on the phone. It will be good to meet them, hopefully a closure for them. I’ve got to go, but it will be a hard weekend.
“I don’t know what stories they’ve been told.
“But it will be good for them to talk to me and to ask questions about what was there and what wasn’t there,” David said.
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