Crash victim’s eerie Facebook posts
Less than a fortnight before he died in a fiery plane crash in Melbourne, a US tourist visiting Milford Sound wrote an eerie Facebook post about how he was scared of flying.
Texan entrepreneur Glenn Garland had been on a tour of New Zealand and Australia with his partner and friends visiting luxury sites and playing golf.
The 67-year-old and four others were killed in the crash near Essendon Airport about 9am local time on Tuesday.
On February 8, Garland wrote: “Laurie [his partner] about to board. How can she be so calm when I’m worried about needing an extra pair of underwear?”
Later that day he added another post which read: “Only burned 5000 calories of anxiety on the flight over. Beats a five-hour oneway bus ride.”
Then the day before the fatal flight, Garland wrote another post about the “really tough and windy conditions” at Royal Melbourne Golf Club.
He also said Melbourne was a magnificent and amazing city: “We had rain squalls, and wind that was almost Biblical in the fierceness. The only thing we missed was a plague of locusts. My hat is off to the Aussies that play in this every day,” he said.
Friends and family of the American victims — Greg DeHaven, Russell Munsch, John Washburn and Garland — have identified the men’s bodies.
Their wives had accompanied them to Australia, but were not on the plane when tragedy struck. The women had reportedly organised to go on a day trip along the Great Ocean Rd, an Australian heritage site, that day.
Pictures show the group at various sites around New Zealand and Australia where Garland spoke of playing golf with Munsch, a well-known law firm partner also from Austin, Texas. Garland was also pictured with DeHaven, a 70-year-old retired FBI agent, from Spicewood, Texas, and Washburn, a 67-year-old retiree also from Spicewood, in an album posted on Facebook with photos from their adventures.
They had planned to continue their tour in Tasmania’s King Island, which boasts two of Australia’s best public golf courses. They were due to arrive on the island on Tuesday morning.
Instead, the four died with the pilot in the plane crash that Victorian Premier Dan Andrews described as the worst aviation disaster the state had seen in 30 years.