Descendants of Brenda Hean, missing since 1972, to complete skywriting flight to Canberra
Brenda Hean disappeared without a trace in 1972 after leaving Cambridge on a biplane bound for Canberra. Today, her descendants are taking to the skies themselves to finish the job she set out to do.
Tasmania
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As the Tiger Moth biplane carrying Brenda Hean and Max Price drifted up into the clouds over Cambridge, those who’d gathered to send the pair off couldn’t have known it was the last time they would ever see them.
Hean, an environmental activist, and Price, a pilot, set out for Canberra on September 8, 1972 with a plan to write ‘Save Lake Pedder’ in the sky over Parliament House and lobby the federal government.
But they never made it to the capital – or even back to Hobart. Hean and Price disappeared without a trace.
Now, exactly fifty years after she flew out of Cambridge Aerodrome, Hean’s descendants are going to complete the task she never could, departing on the same day she did.
“Being able to finish off something that was started so long ago makes me proud of my family and makes me believe that people have power,” says Charlotte Ditcham, who will fly to Canberra in a Tiger Moth just like the one that carried her great-great aunt.
Ditcham, 16, said she was feeling “nothing but excited” about the journey.
“I am honoured to be doing this for my family and am privileged to have the opportunity to be a part of this journey,” she said. “It is an amazing feeling to think that something may come from this event.”
Together with her brother Oliver and other relatives and friends of the late Hean, Ditcham will see that the message ‘Restore Lake Pedder’ is written in the Canberra sky.
Hean, who was 62 when she went missing, fought doggedly but unsuccessfully to prevent Lake Pedder in Tasmania’s south-west from being flooded by the Hydro-Electric Commission to provide inflow to the Gordon Power Station.
Her family has long suspected Hean’s disappearance was the result of foul play.
Her niece, Celia Watchorn, was there at Cambridge in 1972 to farewell her aunt.
“The plane (hangar) was found to have been broken into the night before (the flight),” Watchorn said. “And the … emergency beacon, which was in the Tiger Moth but was then removed, that was found behind fuel drums in the plane hangar. And that would have been activated on crashing or coming down.”
“Both she and Max received death threats three-to-four days before takeoff. And Bren’s was: ‘Mrs Hean, how would you like to go for a swim?’”
Watchorn said the search for Hean and Price went on for 10 days before being called off and the family has always been dissatisfied with the police investigation.
“As far as I’m aware, missing persons cases are never closed until there’s some definitive evidence found of whatever might have happened,” she said.
“And that’s always been in the backs of our minds. But you can’t change what’s happened.”
Hean, who was a piano teacher and a founding member of the Hobart Arts Club, would have been “so chuffed” to see Charlotte and Oliver continuing her legacy, Watchorn said.
“I can see her – she was always smiling, which was beautiful,” Watchorn said. “And she stood very upright and proud.”
“And she’d be standing even more upright and proud now.”
The flight is part of a campaign to have Lake Pedder restored to its former glory.
Restore Pedder convener and former Greens leader Christine Milne will travel to Canberra to witness the message being written in the sky, and will lobby parliamentarians while she’s there, just as Hean had intended to do herself.
“I would assume that the Albanese government is not going to be any different to the (Morrison) Liberal government in saying that Tasmania will have the critical say (on Lake Pedder),” Milne said.
“And that means that the real decision-maker here is going to be the Premier (Jeremy Rockliff).”
Milne said the commemorative flight would be a fitting tribute to Hean and Price’s courage and determination.
“I just think the story is really important (and) that Tasmanians actually know … what happened,” she said.
When Hean was preparing to take off on that fateful day in September, a journalist asked her if she would ever “call it a day” when it came to her environmental campaigning.
Shaking her head, she replied: “I will never call it a day. We will never give up the fight.”
It seems this spirit has been passed down to Hean’s great-great niece.
“Brenda was prepared to do something about what she thought was a grave mistake which made her an inspiration,” Charlotte Ditcham said. “She inspired a lot of people (and) her story, 50 years later, inspires passionate individuals to continue fighting for what they believe in.”
“It is Brenda who inspires me to care for the environment and do what I can to protect it.”
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