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Several hundred metres down the road from the clubrooms is this - the Richard Pearse Memorial. The aeroplane is made of permanent materials and it rotates on the mast like a weather vane. It marks the spot where Richard Pearse crashed his monoplane on that first flight - straight into a huge gorse hedge, some 3 metres high. The farmland in the background was where Pearse farmed at the time, a 40 hectare farmlet made up of 4 paddocks. The paddocks still remain, but the gorse hedges have been replaced by high, wire, fences and the farm is now operates as a deer farm. It can't be seen in the picture, but a grass runway had been prepared across one of the paddocks - it ran parallel to the road. There was also a graded extension to the runway, which stretched across into a second paddock. The fence between the two had been removed, of course. These two paddocks were to be the location of the MOTAT reconstruction's flight attempts. These photos were taken on 30th March 2003, the
flight attempt taking place the next day. Note the nice weather. |
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