Eddie
Connellan's autobiography "Failure of Triumph" is a depressing story of
his endless annoy-
ance and
frustration at being at
the mercy of DCA for every action he took - he needed a Govern-
ment
subsidy to survive and that subsidy was administered by DCA whose
bureaucrats stopped
him from buying Beech 18s immediately after
the war, insisting he flew ancient DH.89 Dragon
Rapides instead. They then obstructed his
next choice of Herons for 10 years. Finally, when
when his son Roger, who was destined to become the General Manager of
the airline, was killed
by
the
suicide Baron pilot, Connellan decided to sell out to East-West
Airlines,
predicting that the
company they
floated to operate his outback routes, Northern
Airlines, would go broke within a
year.......and indeed they did.
Greg Banfield's shot of -CLV above was taken at Mascot in Sept
1974. Immediately below, the
ex-Connellan Heron is seen all decked out in the short-lived
North-
ern livery
in a shot from the Chris O'Neill
collection, taken at Alice
Springs in August 1980.
When Northern folded VH-CLV went to Sydney based AvDev
Airlines Davey,
and was used
on
scheduled services to NSW country centers. The third and fourth
shots show -CLV in two
variations of the airlines' scheme. The upper, by Chris
O'Neill at Mascot in June 1982 with full
AvDev Airlines
Davey livery and the lower, by Greg Banfield at the same airport in
March 1983
showing it sans 'Davey'.
Finally, at the foot of the page, -CLV is seen at
Essendon in
January
1985 in a photo
by Mike Madden when with Airlines of
Tasmania. AoT had, by
then, adopted
the Riley Heron
as their standard equipment. C/n 14124, along
with the
remains of VH-CLZ
(c/n
14075) have been donated to the Queen Victoria Museum
in Launceston, although on a
return trip to
my old home town in 2006 I could not find evidence
of either of them. .