The day in the late sixties that the
Hiller UH12E "The Pink Pussy Cat" went down up in the
mountains (up the back of Haast –
South Island New Zealand) with Sam V
on board after it stripped its main
transmission sheer bolts, ended in a
big party in one of the dongas at
Mussel point to celebrate their
rescue.
To the hardened helicopter pilots
and their shooters, the relief at
the safe recovery of the PPC’s crew
culminated in about 30 bearded
sweaty Swanny clothed bodies pilots
and crew rapidly drinking
many cartons of Speight's beer
originally sly grogged into the area
in the dead of night on the
back of an old 1943 Army
"Blitz" truck and stored
in the back of Dave J’s petrol
station.
I don’t think it was the crowd
deafening memory of a full magazine
of an SLR being shot through the
roof (from the inside) to let the
blinding smoke haze out – followed
by the rain coming back in, or the
deadly sight of the drunken Maori
bloke’s axe reflecting in the weak
light of the low voltage light bulbs
as it swung by about an inch to one
side of my head as he went stir
crazy, rather it was what happened
to Dooky at about 0300 am.
At this time, the venison boom was
in full swing.
A literal swarm of
Hillers and Hughes 300C helicopters
burned thousands of drums of Avgas
scouring the alpine mountain valleys
from before dawn till after dusk,
recovering millions of dollars of
Red Deer carcasses at $1 a pound
weight.
Ace bush pilots like Jimmy F
flew their Cessna 180s back to
Mussel point so loaded with dead
deer that they frequently had to use
all their skills and a fair bit of
luck to get airborne from the bush
strips, yet even then they still
landed with the occasional bit of
green leafy stuff caught in the
undercarriage.
The local respected and great farming people
the Eggling family, let all and
sundry use Mussel point airstrip as
they wisely saw the financial
benefit to the local community -
although the time they used their
tractor and posthole digger in the
middle of a dark and stormy night to
make a solid wooden fence corral around M.B’s Piper 150 aeroplane raised a
few eyebrows at the time. “Don’t
cross the Egglings” – the word soon
got around.
A few Kms north, the venison
factory in Haast township was
working day and night.
In came the
multitude of lifeless deer and pigs;
out went frozen wild game meat to
the unsuspecting citizens of
Germany.
When the new young factory
manager from the city turned up in
this wild west town, driving a white
and purple convertible Ford Zephyr
- similar to the photo below
- with twiddly dice shaped things hanging from the
rear view mirror, the biggest of the
acetylene “fun” bombs went off.
We
all hid, crouched and huddled in
Dave’s garage, waiting until the
manager emerged at the end of a
shift and jumped in the pimp car and
turned the key.
Immediately the
electric coil sent a huge fat spark
down the spark plug leads and also
to the lead which had been
disconnected and attached to an old
spark plug which had the big balloon full
of 50/50 oxygen and acetylene from
Dave’s welding gear held over the
plug tip with a rubber band.
Maybe it was the knowledge of the
last midnight shooting in town a
month or so before he arrived (I
survived by luck) where
a local roads worker was killed in
the little hut next to mine or the
unsolved shooting of VC on the road
into town from Mussel Point or maybe
the manager thought his
“connections” had finally caught him
up.
Boom as loud as a real bomb going off went the balloon – “I’m
shot, I’m shot in the head” screamed
the manager as he rolled out the
door onto the muddy street in his
city clothes clutching his noggin in
both hands –
not a thing wrong with him except a
large stain – somewhere.
Unfortunately
the local
policeman saw the fun from across
the road and said that “enough was
enough” - everyone thought he
meant in town only.
We left the PPC celebration late
that night and, as the regular 24
inches of rainfall a day made
fireworks damp and useless, decided
to truly celebrate the occasion by
putting a small fun bomb under the
bonnet of Dooky’s beloved stripped
down, oxidized blue, short wheel base, 1952 Land Rover with no windscreen - which had
his initials
painted on the driver's door.
That was the last ever fun bomb ever
in the district..........
Whoops --- How were we to know that the Land
Rover had a
flat battery and Dooky had to lean
down in front of the engine and use
the old crank handle to
start the engine?
