Gavin Grimmer
To have all these interlinking features from reports of people that didn’t know each other shows that this could not have possibly been collaborated, in fact some of the content of their reports sound so outrageous, I’m surprised they actually came forward with them... unless of course, they were all telling the truth as they saw it! This fact alone proves that what they saw was real.
You might ask why did the plane then turn east away from Bucketts Way Highway and towards the coast? We may never know, but I think it may have had something to do with what D. Peter’s said... that it was raining at Stroud at the time, and Mike may well have been able to see this rain shower ahead and was attempting to skirt around it. He was at that point (in fact from Berrico Trig onwards) back to flying visually (NVFR) and the last thing he would have needed considering the pressure he would have been under, was to have reduced visibility at low level!
Some seem to get a bit hung up over Jimmy Clair as later in his life some of the locals knew him as a hopeless drunk who had a reputation of not being very truthful, and just write off what he said about this sighting as another tall story. Many others remember him as a hard working man and despite his drinking he was a good man and was always reliable. But I ask you this, if you think this was probably a tall story - have you forgotten about the fact that his wife and children still remember the night where he claimed he saw a plane go missing? He recalls it getting tossed all around the place on it’s way into a valley across from where he was living at the time with his family. He goes on to say that it must have crashed in there as he hadn’t seen it come out again. Now remember at this time, just before 8pm on a Sunday night, MDX is not yet reported missing and technically its not!
Jimmy then asks his wife to come out and see, and this very point is crucial to backing up his story. Its irrelevant whether Jimmy’s wife saw anything, just the fact he asked her at that very point in time to come and see what he was witnessing is key.
Its not until the very next day that Jimmy hears that a plane has gone missing after
hearing it on the radio. Then, feeling so strongly about it, he drove all the way
into town to report it to the Police... and he never stopped talking about it for
the rest of his life. Surely, this is not what you would expect to be the actions
of a person that had imagined it? I believe, especially due to all the evidence I
have pointed out in this report, that what Jimmy saw was none other than VH-MDX!!
I
often wonder if he became a drunk because no-one would listen to him?
Place yourself
in his position... you see a plane going in... you find out the next day that there
was five people on board... and you know roughly the area they are in... yet the
authorities wont listen as they believe it is somewhere else, and the area is too
big for you to search yourself!
Jimmy and the odd friend did do the occasional search
and I suspect Jimmy did a few on his own, but the point is, with the weight of this
on your mind it would haunt you for the rest of your life, and for some - it would
drive them to drink!
From all of this, I’m sure you would have to agree that there
is more than enough strong evidence that proves that what Jimmy Clair claimed he
saw was correct and Cessna 210 VH-MDX is nowhere near the generally accepted crash
site area, and in fact somewhere near where Jimmy saw it .... or maybe (let’s hope
not!) further east yet again?
If anyone still thinks I’m wrong – then I challenge
you to prove it! I say this, as I am certain that if you put the time in to try to
prove me wrong, you will eventually come to the same conclusion as I, that VH-MDX
and it's occupants has to be in this area somewhere...
One last thing... mainly as a matter of interest and intrigue, Jimmy evidently said
it flew into a valley and he never saw it fly out again. We are currently checking
out a small valley that Jimmy could have seen from his place, and this small dead
end valley more or less faces towards where the Father and Son’s were elevated close
to 3000 ft well above the plains – about 26 kms away and this is what Yarn De Vrise
said, “I got up for a piss about 10 to 15 min later and heard a distant thud like
a tree falling. I don’t know if it was the plane or not just remember thinking it
was loud.”
The time it would have taken VH-MDX to fly from where Yarn saw it to where
Jimmy saw it go down would be around 10 minutes...
With a little more information from Donna Krane I’m quite sure I could narrow the search area down quite considerably but I have not been able to get hold of her contact details, so if you read this article Donna, please contact me.
MDX pg 62