Tragedy In The Skies Of Adelaide

Sunday 17th March, 2013

Today is St Patrick's Day.  For the Irish it is a special day in their calendar. Happy St Patrick's Day to all those who celebrate it!

This weekend we didn't have Katie.  Last week she had been sick and on Friday night was the movie/disco night that she likes to attend.  She had also planned to spend some of the weekend with her school friends.  We were happy with that.  I have told her a million times that we are more than happy for her to spend time with her mates than come to us for the weekend.  As she is getting older I think it's good for her to have friends over and for her to go to their places too.

On Saturday Bob rang and invited us out for tea.  They had more of the "Split the Bill" vouchers and this time they were going to the Rosewater Hotel.  From the outside the hotel is old and dingy looking, you would walk past rather than go in, but once inside we were surprised how nice it was.

The food was great!  Tony and I had Thai Prawns, Robyn had Garlic Prawns and Bob had his usual steak.  For dessert us girls had Apple and Custard Crumble and the guys had Strawberries and Cream. They also had a great selection of salads and hot vegies from the salad bar.  That's one place we wouldn't mind going back to.  Looks can be deceiving.....who would have thought we would have a nice meal from there.

Today, there was an air show at Parafield Airport.  It was to commemorate the 103rd anniversary of powered flight in South Australia plus to raise money for restoration work at the Classic Jets Fighter Museum.  As Tony likes his planes we decided to go and have a look.  They had several Antique and Classic aircraft on show plus a few of them took to the sky to show the crowd what they were capable of.  

Chris Sperou and his plane were just finishing their acrobatic aerial display when we got there.  

The next plane to take to the sky was a Boomerang.  We watched it do it's manouvres.  

Then came a replica of the Spitfire.  The plane was on it's third fly past when suddenly it rolled a couple of times and was lost behind the trees.  

The crowd were waiting for it to come back as the next plane, a T-28 Trojan was on the runway ready to take to the sky.

An announcement came over that the Spitfire had been involved in a mishap but at that stage they had no further information.  About 10 minutes later it was confirmed that the plane had crashed, but the fate of the pilot was unknown, and as a result all other scheduled flights would be cancelled.  People stood around in disbelief, no-one really knowing what to do.  

Eventually we all started to make our way out of the airport.  Tony had heard that the plane had come down not too far away from the airport and so we went to have a look.  It was not until we got to the scene that we learned that the pilot had been killed.  Luckily the plane had come down into the carpark of the R M Williams factory.   Some 200 metres away was an oval where a soccer match involving children was being played.  

Thank goodness plane crashes in Adelaide is a rarity.  It was a tragic end to what was otherwise a good day.