Southern Cross Replica to star at special events
The Southern Cross Replica will make three special guest appearances in March, at the Aviation Hall of Fame, Sydney Airport and Cooma's Southern Cloud memorial
The beautifully restored full-size replica of Australia’s most famous aircraft, Kingsford Smith’s record-breaking Southern Cross, will feature at three special events being held across New South Wales in March.
Australian Aviation Hall of Fame inductees dinner
Attendees at this year’s Australian Aviation Hall of Fame (AAHoF) induction dinner will initially gather beside the flying replica of the Fokker FVIIB trimotor monoplane Southern Cross on Saturday, 14 March at 5pm.
Four pioneers – Bill Bristow, Greg Dunstone, Billy Hart & Sir Ivan Holyman – will be inducted at a dinner held at the AAHoF display on the mezzanine at the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) Aviation Museum located at Shellharbour Airport.
Built in South Australia during the 1980s using traditional aircraft construction, the replica is a flying tribute to aviation and the four-member crew (Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm, Harry Lyon and James Warner) who defied the odds in making the first trans-Pacific crossing almost a century ago in 1928.
Damaged after a failure within the right side undercarriage in Adelaide in 2002 the replica, bearing Smithy’s original registration VH-USU, was restored at HARS to fly again some 21 years later.
First flight back into Sydney Airport
The Southern Cross Replica will make its first flight into Sydney Airport since the rebuild to commemorate Smithy’s historical arrival nearly a century ago following the original history-making flight from Oakland, California via Hawaii and Fiji to Brisbane then to Sydney.
Such was the euphoria in June 1928 that some 300,000 people from Sydney’s then population of two million swarmed to Mascot Aerodrome to greet the crew.
The Southern Cross Replica is set to land at Sydney Airport International terminal shortly after 10am, subject to operational factors.
Remembering the Southern Cloud and lives lost 95 years ago, Cooma
The Southern Cross Replica will fly to Cooma where a memorial dinner will be held on Saturday, 21 March to mark the 95th anniversary of the loss of the airliner Southern Cloud in the Snowy Mountains during a scheduled flight from Sydney to Melbourne.
Organisers from Cooma Lions Club have invited Tom Sonter who found the wreckage in 1958 and descendants of the crew and passengers to the dinner.
As a sister aircraft the Southern Cross Replica will fly from HARS Aviation Museum to Cooma Airport on Saturday, 21 March, subject to operational factors, with the HARS crew attending memorial events.
Visit HARS Aviation Museum
Visitors can see the Southern Cross Replica and many other aircraft of significance to Australian aviation at the HARS Aviation Museum, located at Shellharbour Airport, just off the highway at Albion Park Rail.
Open daily for guided tours (last starting at 2pm) the largely undercover hangars offer a hands-on experience with aircraft including also the double record holding former Qantas Boeing 747-400, the world’s only flying Lockheed Super Constellation, a swing-wing F-111 supersonic bomber, an airworthy Lockheed Neptune, DC-3/Dakotas and submarine hunting former RAN Trackers. Café Connie offers great coffee and value food.
