REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Monday July 11, 2005

TWO of the Gold Coast’s best known personalities, Brian and Kathy Ray, were missing after a trip to the snow went horribly wrong.

Mr Ray, who was named in BRW’s list of Australia’s richest 200 people earlier that year with an estimated wealth of $130 million, and Mrs Ray disappeared in blizzard-like conditions when their chartered Piper Chieftain light aircraft lost radio contact about 5.30pm on the previous Friday about 11km south-east of Mount Hotham.

The couple, who were flying to Mount Hotham for a trip which combined business and pleasure, and their pilot Russell Lee had not been heard from since.

It had snowed heavily in the area since the disappearance and it was feared the plane may have crashed with wreckage buried in snow.

Low cloud cover and extremely poor visibility initially prevented aerial searches.

The rescue efforts, involving about 60-70 police and SES personnel, had been limited to searches on horseback and on foot. The terrain in the search area, three nautical miles southeast of the airport, was too rugged for any sort of vehicle, including snowmobiles.

Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokeswoman Tracey Jiggins said two helicopters managed to conduct searches last night after the weather improved but no signs of wreckage had been spotted.

Ms Jiggins said while this morning’s weather forecast did not look promising, it was hoped conditions would clear either this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

The wreckage of the plane was later discovered.