For Family And Friends, The Long Wait
The Age
Saturday June 3, 2000
WHYALLA
It was an awful moment for the grieving relatives of the eight who died.
As police briefed reporters, friends and family gathered around. In the harsh reality of a news conference, there are no comforting words, nothing to soften the blow. Just the facts.
The family had watched as police divers kept looking for the downed plane.
Some huddled silently around as reporters were briefed on yesterday's rescue effort, listening grimly as Whyalla police said there could be virtually no hope left that anyone was still alive.
``I accept there are friends and relatives of those who were on the plane present, but we are attempting to find the plane and the bodies, if they exist, of the passengers on the plane," Chief Inspector Terry Harbour said. ``I apologise if it has upset any of the relatives."
The mourners, who for two days have banded together for comfort, included a former international racing driver, Vern Schuppan, whose cousin, Chris Schuppan, 39, was among those who died on Wednesday night.
The relatives have spent the past 60 hours waiting, basing themselves at the Whyalla police station or at the search-and-rescue headquarters.
Despite a huge search of Spencer Gulf and the mangrove areas of either side, only two bodies have been recovered. They were identified yesterday as Peter Olsen, 48, who is a cousin of SA Premier John Olsen, and his wife Wendy, 45, both from Cleve.
For the first time in an Australian sea rescue, aircraft have been fitted with laser depth-sounding, a radar that maps the ocean bed much more accurately than sonar.
The equipment lent by a geological company, LADS, will be used today to scan 100-metre strips of the ocean bed.
But with the weather starting to deteriorate, police were yesterday uncertain when the wreck would be found.
Once located, police and the coroner's office will decide how and when bodies will be recovered. ``We have to be very delicate, we have to be sensitive to the needs of the families in particular, and we have to preserve any evidence," Chief Inspector Harbour said.
The others who died in flight 904 from Adelaide to Whyalla were the pilot, Ben Mackiewicz, 21, who lived in Adelaide but was from Ballarat; a grandmother, Teresa Pawlik, 56; union official Neil Marshall, 50, of Sydney, who was flying to Whyalla for a meeting at BHP; Joan Gibbons, in her 40s, who lived in Whyalla; Richard Deegan, 44, a lawyer, of Whyalla.
A memorial service is likely to be held in Whyalla next week.
``The community is suffering," Mayor John Smith said. ``They are still coming to terms with the whole tragedy themselves. They are finding it very hard to accept that the largest air tragedy in SA is right on our doorstep and that people from Whyalla were involved in it."
© 2000 The Age
