VH-AVG Percival P.30 Proctor 2
(c/n H224)
The above photograph from the John Hopton collection was taken by Allan
Carter at Morrabbin
in the late
1950s.
By the time Geoff Goodall saw it at in 1967, (immediately below) it
had, in
fact, been
withdrawn from use at Wiawera Station,
Olary, having failed to
pass its DCA wood/
glue adhesion tests. It still
looked pretty good, in
my view. This Proctor was one
of many hundreds
built by
F. Hills and Sons
of Manchester (a furniture manufacturer) during WW
II. It served with
the RAF as BV658 before being
civiliianized in 1946 as G-AHVG. At the foot of the page
is a
rare shot of the Proctor as G-AHVG
provided by John Williams of Adelaide. This photo was
taken prior to 1955, the year in
which John's father, Jack Williams, acquired the aircraft and flew
it out from the UK, crashing on Sir
Graham Moore Island in the Timor Sea in the process. It was
recovered by
barge early in 1956, repaired and flown to Nhill, Victoria.
Jack
decided to sell the
machine after it had been restored and
repainted and hence the initial rego allocation which was to
have been VH-AJW (his initials) was
never taken up, and it became VH-AVG instead. This air-
craft has now been restored and is
masquerading as the Percival P.3 Gull Six
VH-ACM as seen in
the contemporary shot by Ken Watson (third
photo), taken in the
hangar at Alice Springs.
