The front page of The Courier-Mail of 29 December 1973 although
it wasn't quite as desperate as portrayed. The fledgling museum did
have somewhere to put the aeroplane, QAM member Don Elliott having offered
his farm at Boonah as a fallback. Thanks to the Courier-Mail's aviation
writer, the late Alan Underwood, front page exposure of adversity worked
a treat and several offers were forthcoming. In February 1974, at the
kind invitation of the Hunter family, the Canberra was moved to Pioneer
Valley Park, a museum of horse-drawn vehicles at Kuraby on Brisbane's
southside. To some this must have seemed an appropriate venue given
the museum's apparent cart-before-the-horse beginnings! The aircraft
would have been moved to Kuraby sooner had it not been for the intervention
of the notorious Australia Day floods in January 1974. This was to be
just the first time that Canberra A84-225 made the front page of the
newspapers. QUEENSLAND AIR MUSEUM www.qam.com.au |