Family grieves as seaplane salvage begins

AIR crash investigators will today get their first look at the wreckage of the seaplane that crashed on New Year’s Eve.

In what is expected to be a six-hour recovery operation, police attached to Marine Area Command, including specialist police divers, hope to lift the plane out of the Hawkesbury River, in NSW, in one piece.

The mission comes as a former British MP whose daugh- ter and granddaughter were killed in the New Year’s Eve crash yesterday said their loss was devastating.

Instead of looking forward to the wedding of his daughter Emma Bowden to millionaire businessman Richard Cousins, Gerry Bowden is planning to take home the bodies of Emma, 42, and her daughter Heather, 11, for their funerals.

The mother and daughter died in the crash in the Hawkesbury River alongside Emma’s fiancee, the Compass chief executive Mr Cousins and his two adult sons, William and Edward, as they left Cottage Point Inn after lunch to return to Sydney Harbour.

Canadian pilot Gareth Morgan, 44, also perished.

Mr Bowden, 82, who served for nine years in Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government in the 1980s and into the early 1990s, released a statement on behalf of himself and his other children Kate, Rebecca and Oliver. “Gerry Bowden and all his family are devastated by the loss of dear Emma and dear Heather who spread happiness and joy among all they met throughout their lives,” the statement says.

“We deeply feel but their memory brightly forever.”

Emma, the art editor of OK! Magazine, met Mr Cousins in a London pub about a year after his wife died of cancer in 2015.

He was poised to retire from his job as boss of the world’s biggest catering firm at Easter and marry Ms Bowden in June. their loss will shine