Families Mourn As Four Die In Plane Crash
The Sunday Age
Sunday November 9, 2008
FOUR people - including Melbourne policewoman Erin Condon and her nine-year-old son Matthew - died when the twin-engine plane carrying them to an athletics event in New South Wales crashed into a hill and burst into flames near Bathurst.
Debris from the crash on Friday night was strewn 200 metres across a paddock and witnesses said the accident set off a glow like a fireball in the sky.Senior Constable Condon and Matthew, who loved playing football and Lego, were accompanying her best friend, triathlete Jacalyne Sherlock, to an event at Port Macquarie. Ms Sherlock's new boyfriend was flying the plane. All four are thought to have died instantly.A photograph from Erin's 40th birthday, last April, shows her and Matthew hugging tight, with "Matty" wearing his mum's Victoria Police uniform.Ms Condon was a single mother working shifts, 13 years on the force, so on most days her parents, Rex and Aileen, helped care for their grandson at their Ashwood home."He was at our place five days a week, either early in the morning or night depending on when mum was working. We used to make our life around Matty's holidays," Rex said yesterday. "I thought of her not only as my daughter but as a very close friend; a good girl, independent, a little bit assertive because of the nature of her job. It's going to be a big void in our life, physically and emotionally."Sitting alongside them on last Friday's fatal flight north from Moorabbin was Ms Sherlock. "They have probably been the best of friends since they were babies. They went right through school together and she was going to see Jacqui run," Jacalyne's uncle, Tony Stephens, told The Sunday Age.Ms Sherlock, thought to be in her early 40s, had travelled the world competing in athletics and working in physical education, before setting up a home in Canada. "She dedicated her life to athletics. She was a get-up-and-go girl," Mr Stephens said.He was home in Camperdown, in south-west Victoria, yesterday morning when his older brother Bob rang to say that his only daughter had been killed. She was staying with her parents in Ringwood North and was due to compete in the Port Macquarie half ironman, on the NSW coast, today. Race organisers became concerned when she hadn't registered by yesterday afternoon and called her parents, Bob and Helen, in Melbourne.They had planned to fly north with their daughter, but changed their minds. Erin and Matthew Condon, though, went to watch her race.The pilot of their Piper Chieftan twin-engine aircraft was Jacalyne's new partner, Timothy O'Brien, a Braeside heating and cooling systems manufacturer. "The love of his life was on the plane. They'd recently met and fallen in love, and booked tickets to Bali to spend some time together," Mr O'Brien's friend, Terry Davenport, said.He was a "great father to three sons he talked about on a daily basis", he said. "He's just a person who'd help out wherever he could."Mr O'Brien, from Beaumaris, once flew a six-year-old cancer sufferer home to Deniliquin after he received chemotherapy, for the community group Angel Flight."Having been a pilot from a very young age I still find flying quite magical, and then to pick up someone who is quite sick, it was like being an angel," was how he described the experience on the group's website.His friend called him a "great pilot, meticulous with the management of his aircraft". The nine-seater Piper Chieftan had been converted into a six-seat executive aircraft..Mr O'Brien stopped to refuel the twin-engine plane at 8.30pm on Friday at Bathurst Aerodrome, in NSW, and then continued north-east to Port Macquarie.It crashed into a hill and exploded into flames on a rural property, only five kilometres after take-off. The bodies of all passengers were found in the wreckage.Four investigators from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau were on site yesterday to try to determine the cause of the crash, and could make a preliminary report within 30 days, a bureau spokesman said.Ms Sherlock's uncle Tony Stephens, who has flown ultra-light planes for years, is among those awaiting answers. "I reckon he's had a heart attack, or maybe it's a fuel problem - but even then you can glide down, you don't just bang into the side of a hill," he said.How the crash happened- On Friday afternoon, Piper Chieftain VH-OPC with four passengers leaves Moorabbin airport.- After refuelling at Bathurst airport, it takes off again about 8.30pm headed for Port Macquarie.- About 5km from the field, the plane crashes into a hill.- On board were pilot Timothy O'Brien, Victorian policewoman Erin Condon, her nine-year-old son Matthew Thomas Condon, and triathlete Jacalyne Sherlock.
© 2008 The Sunday Age
