Max Hazelton | The last of the mavericks

The barely-believable story of how one man walked back from the dead to revolutionise aviation – and take on Qantas and Virgin.

On Saturday, 16 October 1954, bad weather stopped Max Hazelton from flying home after a trip to Sydney. The grazier, from Toogong, near Orange, was in town to put a new engine in his Auster Aiglet four-seater plane, but atrocious conditions over the Great Dividing Range hampered his efforts to get going. After one bodged attempt that morning, the 27-year-old called the weather office for a forecast but was told, in no uncertain terms, that things weren’t likely to get any better, with low clouds extending right down the mountains. Still, after being reassured by his mother that the skies were improving, he took off in his little silver and red plane anyway. 

Around 45 minutes into the journey, Hazelton spotted a break in the weather where he could spy the other side of the range. But as he made a play for it, the clouds closed in all around him, and he decided to turn back. He was too late. Moments later, the Auster’s airspeed increased to 160 mph and he entered a spiral dive. Air crash investigators, reporting the incident, would later reveal the aircraft crashed in “heavily timbered” terrain, 2,000 feet up a mountain, just southeast of the Jenolan Caves. Or, in other words, in the middle of nowhere.