Don O’Rorke and Scott Hutchinson dive to find WWII plane wreckage off Canada

Brisbane property players Don O'Rorke and Scott Hutchinson survived chilly waters and quicksand on a trip to Canada to solve a family mystery.

Don O'Rorke and Scott Hutchinson at the Fortitude Music Hall site during construction.

They’ve surfed in Indonesia, ran with the Bulls in Spain, heli-skied in Canada and in between built hundreds of projects throughout Australia over the last 35 years.

Don O’Rorke and Scott Hutchinson, who have been mates since they met 50 years ago at Brisbane Boys’ College, have just returned from a new Canadian adventure.

But this was a more poignant one which saw them diving into the cold waters off northeast Canada, searching for the wreck of a Ventura bomber that O’Rorke’s uncle Donald Cormack was piloting when it crashed during training in 1943. He was 22 and O’Rorke is named after him.

The Consolidated Properties’ boss says his uncle's death had cast a dark cloud over the family and sparked the long-held ambition to find the wreckage off the coast of New Brunswick.

“We went over there based on the work anthropologist Arthur Palmer and the result was that we had three co-ordinates to work with,” he says.

“We got there expecting to dive in and find the plane and we thought was good evidence. We spent four full days with a CodeSonar but there was nothing there.

“The conclusion was that because it was in relatively shallow waters the wreckage had been shifted by the many storms that have hit the area.”

A Ventura bomber similar to the one flown by Donald Cormack.

They were assisted by internationally renowned salvage experts Bill Thuma who found the famous Lost Squadron in deep water in the Arctic Circle, and Jim Garrington has a business that produces CodeSonar for US Special Forces.

During the trip O’Rorke and the Hutchies’ chairman were also taken to a mosquito infested deserted island to find another Ventura crash site.

They found it and a small memorial with a crater in front of it.

“I marched into the crater and immediately sunk up to my waist in what was termed quicksand or quick mud or whatever,” O’Rorke says.

“Our guide grabbed hold of me and took about 10 minutes to haul me out. During all of this, all I can hear was Scott laughing his head off taking photos and more concerned about what to put on Instagram and Facebook rather than my life.”

All’s forgiven and back in Brisbane the pair are gearing up for their annual EOFY cocktail party at the Fortitude Music Hall on July 23.

O’Rorke says while they were disappointed, they got to visit the place where his uncle died and if there was any new credible information given to them they will return.

“It's a cloud over our family not knowing where he was but there are millions of these types of stories from families affected by war,” he says.

Appointments

Law firm Mullins has launched a new Family Law practice, led by Pierce Carstensen.

Pierce joins from McInnes Wilson Lawyers, where he founded and led the Family Law

team for over a decade.

The firm has also welcomed Justin McInally as a partner in its Property team. He was at HopgoodGanim Lawyers more than a decade.

The appointments follow a year of growth at Mullins, that included the appointment of Sam McIvor as its new managing partner, the internal promotion of four new partners, the strategic recruitment of Mitchell Osborne from Dentons, and the appointment of James Holmes as chief operating officer and chief financial officer.

Originally published as Don O’Rorke and Scott Hutchinson dive to find WWII plane wreckage off Canada