VH-AEC (3)  Cessna 210                           (c/n  57371)

                                    

                                            The third Australian aircraft to carry my initials was this Cessna 210.  However, it was not my
                                            own initials it is honoring, but rather those of Allan E. Chadwick.  This aircraft had two prior
                                            Australian registrations:  VH-RBH and VH-TOM.  Incidentally, rather than enlarge the subject
                                            matter, I shall leave this delightfully evocative image by Geoff Goodall, taken at Parafield in
                                            June 1963, as is.  I just love that 1950s Ford Customline ambulance, and the Auster III at
                                            right.     The big Cessna was owned, at the time, by the Bush Church Aid Society based at
                                            Ceduna, South Australia.   It had just arrived on a  medevac flight, with a patient being moved
                                            on a stretcher to the waiting ambulance.     . The Bush Church Aid Society was a Church of
                                            England medical service in outback areas, founded by Allan E. Chadwick.  VH-AEC had the
                                            name "Tom Jones" on the nose.   It crashed on 4 December 1983 at the unfortunately named
                                            Midge Point, on the north Queensland coast, where successive developers have tried to establish
                                            a tourist resort area. (Midge is an Australian term for small biting insects)