This Site is dedicated to all those families of the people that have tragically disappeared on flights in and around New Zealand. I only hope that from all the effort in building this site and from all the effort of those taking part in this venture, that it will bear fruit in bringing ‘closure’ to their memories!
Gavin Grimmer
Gavin Grimmer
It is interesting to note here that the whole corner that George Furnell spoke of,
was excavated away in 1959 as per the photo on the right. It is possible that there
was a tunnel entrance in this area, but I have found no direct evidence of it (More
on this - next page). There was an article in the local paper at the time of people
objecting to the quarrying of the soil and it being sold for other interests. By
memory, the residents managed to put a stop to this process.
Here is this above image zoomed in, and going by the models of the cars shown, this
photo was taken some time after 1968-69. The position of this entrance is in the
bank just above the existing car park. It is “about 40 paces from the apex of the
corner” (as per George Furnell’s statement), and note that he said, “this one you
could drive a vehicle inside”, and I believe he was indicating the size of the tunnel
- he was not meaning that it was used as a vehicle access - although it may have
been possible. I just can’t find any evidence of this though. I (and I know Martin
also), have spent many hundreds of hours perusing photos looking for where this entrance
was, and I only recently stumbled over this photo on my computer that I had photographed
a couple of years ago out of an old book. The arrows and wording on it are mine though
to make it easier to see. By using the full sized photo (which the top photo is cropped
down from) working out where on the beach the photo was taken from and the triangulating
everything, I have been able to narrow the area down and that is in this slightly
greener area shown on this Google Earth image date 1/6/2010:
