Commemorative flight
In marking 90 years since the first plane landed on Stewart Island/Rakiura, a Tiger Moth will journey to the island today.
The yellow 1942 Tiger Moth was expected to be in the skies over Invercargill about 2.30pm, touching down in the city to refuel on its way to the island from Mandeville.
Croydon Aircraft Company pilot Ben Morrison would be on board with Sam Paton.
They planned to land on Mason Bay Beach, the same date of the first plane landing on the island in 1931.
Conditions for flying on Saturday looked good, Morrison said.
On February 27, 1931, Oscar Garden landed a DH 60 de Havilland Gipsy Moth named Kia Ora at Horseshoe Bay. It was a model of plane that the Tiger Moth would replace.
The flight came about after a £5 bet with Myross Bush man Geoff Todd, who was in the Gipsy Moth with Garden.
At that time, only a few planes had flown over the island before, and some children were so frightened at the sight of an aircraft approaching that they ran and hid in the bush.
The first flight over the island was 10 years earlier, on January 13, 1921.
Garden and Todd touched down at Horseshoe Bay. They landed in windy conditions, but bull kelp on a wheel steered them into the water. No-one was injured and the plane was not damaged. Garden’s daughter Mary detailed the adventure in a New Zealand Geographic article.
Garden flew from England to Australia in October 1930 and would go on to become chief pilot at Tasman Empire Airways Ltd (now Air New Zealand).