THE bare facts may be common knowledge but the details of Albury’s most famous aviation event remain sketchy to many.
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Given this, a new exhibition at Albury Library Museum aims to increase awareness of the complete story behind that 1934 emergency landing.
The Uiver: A Photographic History opens on Saturday and continues until November 13.
A history talk next month will mark the 82nd anniversary of the Dutch DC-2 airliner touching down at Albury racecourse.
The plane was competing in the London to Melbourne MacRobertson International Centenary Air Race when it struck trouble. Street light Morse code and car lights on the ground helped guide the Uiver to safety, with residents pulling it out of deep mud the next morning so it could rejoin the competition.
Uiver historian Noel Jackling sourced photographs for the display, which focuses on the plane’s four crew members and three passengers as well as the Albury people who assisted them.
Mr Jackling said the Uiver was the first commercial passenger flight from Europe to Australia in an all-metal plane.
“It is the precursor to international passenger traffic as we know it today,” he said.
“Albury is part of this unfolding of aviation as a means of public transport.”
The historian became interested in the Uiver story through knowing Arthur Newnham, who on that night asked ABC listeners to use their headlights to illuminate a landing strip.
“Twenty-two minutes after he made that call over the radio, the plane landed and touched down on Albury racecourse,” Mr Jackling said.
“We know of two cars that were on the racecourse in 1934 and have survived.”
But the Uiver itself did not long survive its Border adventure.
“What this exhibition seeks to do is to chart the history of the plane from its construction ... through to, only two months after the plane had been saved in Albury, to its destruction in a crash at a place called Rutbah Wells in the Syrian desert,” Mr Jackling said.
“Not too far from Aleppo, which is very much in the news now.”
More than 80 years ago, three men worked together at the power substation to send a Morse code message via street lights to the Uiver, but that is not the whole story.
“They did that for half an hour, the plane wasn’t around, they went back to the post office and then they heard the plane again so they raced back and did it all over again,” Mr Jackling said.
The Uiver talk will be held on Sunday, October 23 at 2pm in Albury Library Museum. To book ring (02) 6023 8333.