3 million cubic metres of dirt and rock, from hillside to sea
MOUNTAINS weren’t moved to build Wellington Airport, but part of a hill was tipped unceremoniously into the sea.
The airport opened with fanfare and a couple of near-fatal plane accidents on October 25, 1959, marking the end of one of New Zealand’s largest civil engineering projects.
Lyall Bay had been Wellington’s home of flight since Arthur Schaef built an aircraft in 1910, less than a decade after the Wright brothers’ first flight, and flew it a few metres along Lyall Bay.
Sand hills were levelled for flying, then, in 1928, a couple of small runways were built. The next year, Charles Kingsford Smith touched down in Wellington at the end of the first transTasman flight.
In 1953, construction began on Wellington’s official airport, at the eastern edge of Lyall Bay.
In the following six years, more than 3 million cubic metres of earth and rock was moved, including shifting Rongotai Hill. Houses that weren’t demolished were moved on to reclaimed land at Evans Bay.
Twenty-eight hectares was reclaimed from the sea to create the new, northsouth runway.
Bill Gilmore was an inspector with the Ministry of Works brought in midconstruction, to oversee a conveyor belt which could fill a 12-yard truck with dirt in 22 seconds. After the Cook Strait reclamation, it was all dumped at Evans Bay.
About 15 people were assigned purely to keeping the belt, made in Johnsonville and notoriously faulty, going.
He remembers the ‘‘quite large’’ Rongotai hill loaded on the belt then truck-by-truck disappearing into the sea. As production increased, more trucks to ferry the dirt were needed.
‘‘It didn’t matter if they didn’t have a warrant of fitness.’’
On October 25, 1959, the £5 million – $214m in today’s terms – project ended and thousands turned out to the opening. Schoolboys sold pies to the crowds, which gathered in tiered seats to watch the festivities.
It was also the opening of the ‘‘tin shed’’ – an airport terminal made from a converted aircraft factory which was meant to be replaced in five years, but was not replaced until 1999.
Little did the pilot of a Sunderland flying boat know, but the Evans Bay end of the runway was about 6 metres higher than the Cook Strait end. He scraped the plane’s belly on the runway during his low-level fly over and, upon landing, the plane had to be quickly beached before it sank.
With big crowds gathered, the incident could have been far worse but the real near-death moment came when a British Royal Air Force (RAF) Vulcan bomber clipped the south end of the runway. It lost its left rear wheel as its undercarriage and left wingtip hit the ground.
As the huge plane spewed fuel, Captain Tony Smailes avoided crashing into crowds by putting on full power, pulling the plane and its five crew back into the air. They managed a crash landing at Ohakea.
It is 54 years this week since that happened but Clare Derby remembers it well. Earlier that day she had been on the first National Airways Corporation (NAC) plane to land in Wellington.
Mrs Derby – or H14, NAC’s 14th air hostess – was on the Viscount turbo-prop plane which took off from Christchurch filled with mayors and dignitaries, on a beautiful trip past the Kaikoura Ranges, to touch down as the first passenger flight into Wellington.
It was a time when people would dress up especially for a flight and one with a hostess was a true novelty. This one was especially exciting.
She remembers taxiing to a stop in front of a crowd of ‘‘thousands’’, followed by a day of celebrations outside.
She was holding her breath as the Vulcan bomber scraped its undercarriage, slewed down the runway in the air, and only just got airborne.
‘‘I just thought it would have flown through all those thousands of people, but it didn’t.’’
Captain Smailes’ widow Beryl remembers getting a call at home in England from Ohakea later that day.
‘‘He thought something was not quite right as he approached and got it down. His only thought was to get it back up . . . he could see all those people sitting in Clare Derby, an air hostess for National Airways Corporation on the first passenger plane that attempted to land at Wellington Airport. the tiers. It was a great day for them but he had to get away from there.’’
But instead of a jubilant call from a pilot who had saved dozens, if not hundreds, of lives, he was upset and shaken, she remembers. ‘‘He felt he had let people down.’’
In an eerily similar incident, Captain Smailes had a heart attack while driving about four years ago.
‘‘His one thought was to get off the road and not cause any harm to other motorists.
‘‘He just drove into the bushes and never regained consciousness.’’