January–February 2014 73Continued page 76a zipper running the balloon’s length — in essence splitting it
open — to allow rapid defl ation.) Teijin collapsed instantly. It
crashed down on Dad and broke his leg, and Terry Golding’s
clothes were set on fi re when molten fabric fell on him.
Terry’s burns, thankfully, were minor, requiring just a single
night in hospital, but sponsors became wary and the balloon was
badly damaged. Yet Terry doesn’t believe the incident dampened
Dad’s enthusiasm, even if he did soon relinquish the idea of
fl ying across Australia.
“I think he realised it was a much more ambitious program
than he’d originally envisaged,” Terry says. “It would have
required massive resources that he simply didn’t have access to.”
Other mishaps followed. In July 1966 (after a successful fl ight
where my mother Cherry became Australia’s fi rst modern-day
female hot-air balloonist) Dad and some others fl ew Teijin at
Canowindra, a sleepy central-western NSW town, now known as
the balloon capital of Australia. They were testing a new defl a-
tion system when a 270kg rope snapped, freeing the unmanned
craft. Teijin fl oated away and radiant heat from the sun provided
the balloon with enough warmth to stay afl oat. It was last seen
140km to the south-east, near Crookwell.
With mounting debts and no balloon, the Aerostat Society
seemed doomed. Two months later, though, a pilot spotted
Teijin in thick bushland and the society recovered it. But a year
later, Teijin’s envelope ripped apart mid-fl ight – perhaps becauseLift-off. Teijin (left) is launched at Cargo in April 1966. Ken Bath (below, at
left) and Terry McCormack fi ddle with Teijin’s burner. Made of cast iron, steel
piping and brass, and with an asbestos cover to protect the pilots, it was more
like an industrial burner for a furnace, says fellow Aerostat Grahame Wilson.ultraviolet rays had weakened its fabric during all those months it
lay in the bush. Stan and fellow pilot Don Joergens were forced
to make emergency jumps, the fi rst time either had parachuted.
It seemed to me the Aerostats lurched from near disaster
to near disaster. But that was perhaps unfair, because not only
were there many successful fl ights, it was also quite clearly a
period of trial and error. “Uninformed is a good word to use,”
says Phil Kavanagh, who joined the society in 1968 and went
on to found Australia’s only commercial balloon manufacturing
company, which he manages to this day. “We just didn’t have a
clue. We were really lucky to survive,” he says. “Especially with
the things we fl ew in.”B
UT TO MY FATHER, these small mishaps meant little. His
optimism was, it seemed, irrepressible. It was also, how-
ever, his undoing. That, and sheer rotten luck.
Until this year, when I chatted with Michael Small, who
witnessed Dad’s fatal fl ight, I had never spoken to anyone –
not even my mother – about the circumstances of his death.
I had never read the newspaper accounts, nor the Australian
Department of Transport’s accident report.
In November 1975, Dad went to Wagga Wagga, 160km
west of Canberra, to fl y with Michael and Tony Hayes. It was a
warm day and Michael says the morning fl ight with Dad in the
James Cook was memorable. “It was the highest I’d ever fl own in
a balloon. We got up to 10,000ft [3048m]. I was wondering if
that was [Mt] Kosciuszko I could see.”
Tony then swapped with Michael and he and Dad took of
at 12.20pm Phil Kavanagh was upset when he heard they’d set
out so late. He’d become suspicious of afternoon fl ights as, once
temperatures rise, thermals start popping. This is why ballooning
is an early morning activity. Phil even talked about it with Dad.
“But Terry had such huge optimism he thought he could
overcome any obstacle,” he says. Yet it was becoming apparent,
COURTESY CHERRY MCCORMACK at least in Phil’s mind, this would not be the