The Silent Grief of Alice Springs 

Last winter, I was in the school library, tutoring Monique. While she bent to her task – some science project -- I picked up Jose Petrick’s The History of Alice Springs through Landmarks and Streetnames, thinking it might be useful for a piece I wanted to write about the pioneer of Outback education, Ida Standley.

“My aunt’s in that book,” she said.

Sure enough, there was Liana Road and a photo of her aunt Liana Nappi as well as an account of the disaster that killed her.

“Nobody knows,” she said.

On January 5^th 1977, Alice Springs had its own “September 11” when a suicide pilot flew a stolen aeroplane into the Connair complex at the airport, killing himself and four staff members.

Connair was the local airline. Launched back in 1939 and initially called Connellan Airways after its founder Eddie or ‘E.J.’ Connellan, it began as a mail shuttle from Alice Springs to Wyndham, W.A. At its peak, it served 132 towns and cattle stations, delivering mail and passengers as well as doing flying doctor runs. In the 1977 tragedy, not only did Liana Nappi, a secretary in the airline office, lose her life but Eddie Connellan’s son Roger and two aircraft engineers also died.

I first heard about the tragedy when I took my father to visit the Central Australian Aviation Museum in 2002. He said he vaguely remembered the incident having happened in Alice Springs in the 1970s. I had been living in the town for nearly four years and I had never heard anything about it. I wondered whether he had his facts straight. I felt sure I would have known about something so dramatic and decided it probably happened elsewhere.

There was nothing about it in the museum and Perry Morey, the historian there, explained why. He said the families of the dead hadn’t given permission for this chapter of aviation history to be included in the exhibits or for any commemoration ceremonies; they felt it was too soon. Mr. Morey had proposed a short summary of the incident for the museum but until family members gave permission, it remained classified information.

I could understand that. A boy with whom I was at primary school in Adelaide lost his twin brother in New York on September 11, 2001. It is a knife to his heart each time he sees those TV images of smoke pouring out of the twin towers. No one seems to care how relatives feel every time that footage is repeated.

Still, I was curious to find out more about the Alice Springs tragedy.

The next day I came across a web page by a Professor David Dolan from Curtin University of Technology in Perth, upset that there was no information about the tragedy beyond a mention in the museum’s brochure that Roger Connellan was killed in an aircraft accident in 1977. Professor Dolan was concerned because when he was at the museum, he overheard a couple discussing the incident, the man insisting that Roger Connellan had been not one of the victims but the suicide pilot! Dolan feared that inaccurate versions of the event might increase pain for the bereaved relatives.

Perhaps I could set the record straight, I thought, as I wandered among the graves of the Connair staff in the Alice Springs General Cemetery. There is also a memorial to them in the Rotary Park near Heavitree Gap and a Roger Connellan Water Fountain at the Araluen arts centre. Liana has a road at the airport and a block of flats in Nicker Crescent named after her and a Liana Nappi Memorial Award is given annually to the best local drama students.

I started with Jose Petrick’s book and then looked up back copies of the local newspaper, The Centralian Advocate, to try to piece together what happened.

The suicide pilot was no fundamentalist Arab nor crazed war veteran but an unhappy young Englishman called Colin Forman, who had worked for Connair for a short time in early 1976. He had stolen the twin-engine aircraft in Wyndham before daylight and crashed it just before eleven o’clock that morning.

The plane smashed into the middle of the Connair complex, carrying 32-year old Roger Connellan with it. His body was found in a drain on the other side of the building. He had been decapitated by one of the propellers. 

The explosion of the fuselage also instantly killed two aircraft engineers who had been working in the machine shop. One was a 31- year-old Swiss immigrant called Markus Chittoni, whose widow took their baby daughter back to Switzerland afterwards, and the other was 48-year-old Ron Dymock, who was on a working holiday with his family and whose body was sent back to Brisbane.

Four other aircraft engineers were injured, two seriously. One of the less injured was 60-year-old Leo Butler, who managed to pull the 19-year-old Liana Nappi from the flames and later received a bravery award for it. She had only got the job as a typist a couple of weeks previously and as it was just after Christmas and New Year, she had only worked there a few days. She had been wearing nylon clothes that burnt straight up and she was screaming, which made the fuel go down her throat. She received burns to 60 percent of her body, mainly the top half, and died a few days later.

The people that the disgruntled ex-employee had wanted to kill, as mentioned in his suicide letter found later, didn’t even work at Connair any more.

I went to see Monique’s mother, Liana’s younger sister Laura, to see what she thought about me doing a story about this horrific event and she put me on to the two aircraft engineers who had been seriously injured, Tony Byrnes and Kym Hansen. Of the two survivors, Tony was a man of few words while Kym was more talkative.

Tony was 21 at the time of the disaster. He had been doing an engine conversion on a Heron when the plane hit.

“I didn’t hear a thing – I didn’t know what happened.”

His mate Kym, 23, was just about to walk out of the workshop when a flying brick knocked him out. When he came to, he went to the toilet to wash his hands. “The skin was hanging off them,” he said. He hadn’t known what had happened either and thought that a tray of petrol, used for cleaning engine parts, had ignited.

Although both men were badly burned, Kym’s loss of consciousness had saved him from burns to the face. There was smoke everywhere and they staggered outside to escape the incredible heat, realizing when they saw the hangar that something major had occurred.

Once they were in a stable enough condition to travel, they were sent to the Burns Unit at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, where they spent three months. Tony had burns to 58% of his body and Kym to 56%.  They had to wear anti-scarring suits to make sure the skin didn’t shrink as it healed and do physiotherapy to keep their joints moving. The painkillers were never enough to ease the agony.

Kym says he was a bit aggressive while in hospital and told everyone to “piss off”. Partly it was the drugs, partly his volatile nature.  The hospital staff called in a chaplain but having religion forced on him only aggravated matters.

While it was Kym’s in-built will to survive that got him through these difficult months, Tony credits the support of his family and girlfriend. He had only been going out with Colleen a couple of weeks when the crash happened but she followed him to Adelaide and stayed with friends. Every day during those three months she would take two buses to the hospital and then home again.

Colleen says that the circumstances would normally have pulled two 21-year-olds apart but there was something deeper there. Twenty-seven years and four kids later, they are still together in the town where Tony was born. He now owns his own aircraft engineering company while Colleen runs a sewing shop.

Tony and Kym spent the rest of 1977 in and out of hospital, having skin grafts. “Everything was a challenge,” says Kym, “even a shave was a pain in the arse.”

Around a year after the disaster, Tony and Kym went back to work, doing light duties. This was 12 months sooner than doctors recommended but both men were keen to put the past behind them and get on with life. Kym describes his first day back in that same machine shop as a “bit scary”, especially when someone accidentally ignited a tray of petrol!

Neither of them has had any psychological counseling but each has been helped by the knowledge that the other was in the same terrible situation. The two friends have dealt with their trauma by refusing to dwell on it. Both Speedway fans, they got back into their favourite sport as soon as possible.

Eighteen months afterwards, Kym married, then had two sons and is now a grandfather. He worked for Ansett until it folded and recently started work for Chartair, running the engine overhaul shop, which is right next door to the old machine shop. “It was weird walking back in there 30 years later” [since his first day with Connair].

Occasionally, the past comes back to haunt Kym. He was quite on edge, visiting the Backdraft set at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, and seeing photos of Bali bombing victims brought back his own memories of horror. The people he felt for most on September 11, 2001 were those escaping the fires in the Twin Towers, “those poor bastards coming out of the bottom,” he said. “It’s not something people can really understand unless they’ve been through it themselves. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

If Tony and Kym speak rarely of the accident, then the people of Alice Springs don’t talk about it much either. The attack was like 9/11 in miniature; the whole community was stunned and people still carry with them the horror of that time. The population was half what it is now and everybody knew someone who was personally affected. The tragedy made world news, although it was soon forgotten elsewhere. Less than two weeks later, the Granville train disaster happened in Sydney.

On a blustery October day, Kym Hansen showed me around the old Connair building. He pointed to where he had been standing when the plane hit and where the two engineers had died. He said they were charred and their bodies were still standing when the firemen came in.  He showed me the stairs that Roger had been about to come down and the office where Liana had been sitting, in a room that faced the runway. No one will ever know whether she saw the plane coming.

Chartair only use the hangars and the workshop; their offices and passenger lounge are in another building. No one works in any of the rooms where people died. Only a handful of people work in that building compared to about 30 when Connair used it.

So well did Kym describe the approach of the killer plane that it sounded as if he had seen it but he said he had not. Roger Conellan’s younger brother Chris put me on to the only eyewitness, a man called Brian Cairns. Brian still goes cold when he thinks about what he saw.

The former engineering manager and his 15-year-old son Mark, who was on work experience, had been working on electronic equipment for a DC-3 that was parked outside the hangar. They had just stepped outside when Brian noticed an aeroplane approach the building from the far side of the runway. It had been heading east and swung around to the north. It was coming low and fast and Brian wondered aloud what the pilot was doing. It flashed through his mind that maybe he was in trouble.

Then when the plane was headed straight for the Connair complex, they heard the engines go into full power – when they really scream. “Run,” Brian shouted and they both dashed in the opposite direction. At the last moment, Brian turned round to see the plane bank to avoid the nose of the DC-3 before it plunged into the building. The fact that the left wing had lifted to avoid the DC-3 was key evidence in the coroner’s report that the plane was under control and that the pilot’s actions were deliberate and not accidental.

After the impact, there was total silence. “It felt like five minutes but it was probably only half a minute. People were in total shock. No sirens went off or anything – even people in the control tower were stunned.”

Brian was one of the first to move and, after they got everyone out, he went next door to the SAATAS building and rang E.J’s personal secretary, Leslie Oldfield. He told her what had happened and got her to ring the police, fire brigade, ambulance and E.J, who was out at his station, Narwietooma. “Just come,” she told E.J., who flew down immediately while his wife Evie and younger son Chris drove in.

As for the airline, it was service as usual. The flight to Ayers Rock left on time at 2.30 that afternoon.

Local businessman Reg Harris met E.J. on the airstrip. “Is Roger among the dead?” was the first thing he wanted to know. Reg said the police would talk to him. E.J. didn’t want to believe it and would only hear it from Brian Cairns.

As well as doing engineering, Mr. Cairns also buried the dead. In 1972, his son, daughter-in-law and grandson had been killed in an air crash. The family had to wait ten agonizing days to bury their dead and afterwards, Brian decided to start up Centre Funeral Services. Reg Harris agreed that the town needed a decent funeral director and assisted with premises.

Of the victims’ funerals, Roger Connellan’s was the largest. Four hundred people packed the Catholic Church and three aeroplanes flew over the cemetery during the burial.

The suicide pilot, Colin Forman, got a quiet Anglican burial in an unmarked pauper’s grave, not far from the final resting places of Roger Connellan, Markus Chittoni and Liana Nappi.

 I felt very nervous about going to see Liana’s parents, Mario and Fiorella. When Jose Petrick had interviewed Liana’s mother for her book some years earlier, it had been quite traumatic for both of them and Liana’s sister Laura had said: “Mum still cries when she talks about her.” But Fiorella didn’t cry as she told me of her daughter’s last days. Over the years, she has come to terms with her loss as best she can.

Early on the 5^th of January, Liana arrived at her parents’ house because her car wouldn’t go properly. Laura, who was 13 then and on school holidays, remembers grouching at Liana because she’d woken her up and spoilt her lovely sleep-in. That was the last time Laura saw her older sister and she still regrets that last argument.

Mario had a look at the car and it turned out that there was no water in the radiator. “It was one of those mornings,” said Fiorella. “She hadn’t had breakfast because she was worried about the car so I gave her breakfast. She didn’t feel like going to work. I told her, ‘don’t worry about going to work’. It was just after the holiday period and she wouldn’t have much to do anyway. But as the new girl, she felt she’d better go.”

Late in the morning, Laura heard the news on the radio and told her mum, “I think something’s happened at the airport.” Fiorella sent Mario down to investigate and he was gone ages.

He got no closer than 200 metres from the airport as there was a roadblock and security guards. “They put the cord around.” All he could see was distant smoke and he was told that the firemen were still working there. Eventually some ambulances came out and he followed them to the hospital.

“When we arrived at the hospital, Liana said, ‘I told them not to let you look at me,’ and that was about the last thing she said. Liana was really angry that they let us see her.”

Liana had always taken care of her appearance and never stepped out of the house with a hair out of place. Now her hair was all singed, her face was black and only the top of her head was okay – that was where her mother stroked her, soothed her.

The next few days are a blur for Fiorella. She flew to Adelaide, where Liana was being treated, and remembers getting off the plane and being asked if she wanted to talk to the media.  When she told them no, they led her down a different passage. Mario joined her a day or two later.

At the hospital, Fiorella’s heart sank lower each time she talked to the doctors about her daughter’s condition. Liana was mainly unconscious and dosed up on morphine. She was unable to talk and could only move one arm a bit – she was wearing a special suit.  Conversations between her and her mother were by intuition – Mum would ask her simple questions like ‘do you need a drink’ – although Liana wasn’t actually able to drink. As time went by, it became clear that she wasn’t going to live and she died on January 10.

“If she hadn’t been burned inside she would have survived but it would have taken years of painful operations to make her look anything like before,” said Fiorella.

After the funeral, Fiorella took to her bed a lot – there was not much worth getting up for. The atmosphere at home was tense, with Laura and her younger sister Linda having to “tiptoe around”, figuratively and literally. Their father reacted by being even stricter with them than he had been with Liana and Liana’s life had been repressed enough.

“She died before she lived,” Fiorella says. Liana had left home and got a flat a month or two before the tragedy but had had no time to enjoy adult life. On the other hand, age would not wither her nor the years condemn. Liana was saved from becoming a disillusioned forty-something, full of lost hopes and almost-forgotten dreams. She was spared from the pains of future tragedies, of growing old and being forgotten. She will always be a bright young thing.

Fiorella now believes that our destinies are pre-written and after finding some of Liana’s poems in the Alice Springs High School yearbooks of the early seventies, I wonder if somehow Liana knew subconsciously what lay ahead.

“Fate is a strange thing,” says Fiorella. She doesn’t blame anyone in particular for what happened, not even the pilot. “He had his grudges because he had been sacked and wanted to hurt the company, not anyone in particular.  I think he wanted to prove himself and damage the company – little did he think about the people – he didn’t even know anybody.”  Mario adds: “It’s like those people in the United States who get the sack and bring a gun to the office.”

It seems that Colin Richard Forman was the classic misfit, the type of angry loner who may end up shooting his high-school classmates. The Centralian Advocate quoted his fellow work mates as describing the 23-year-old as a “shy young man with a chip on his shoulder”. He was arrogant and hard to get along with, they said, and people used to laugh at him.

Kym Hansen says: “He was a bit plump and walked funny – he had splayed feet or something. While the other pilots carried fancy leather cases, he had a crappy cardboard satchel.”

No one I have come across knew him personally, as he didn’t make friends easily, and details about him are sketchy. I tried to track down his family in England but couldn’t even find out their names.

NT Archives had a little information in a 1996 interview of Reg Harris [Reg Harris, Oral history interview, NTRS 226 – TS 859, Northern Territory Archives Service]. Apparently Colin Forman migrated to Australia alone in the early 1970s and drove trams in Melbourne. It was difficult for him to adjust to being so far from his family and in 1974, he was so homesick he forged a QANTAS ticket back to England and had a conviction recorded against him.

He was obsessed with flying and in November 1975 got a commercial pilot’s licence at what was the Nationwide Aviation Space Academy at Cessnock, NSW. He came to Alice Springs after graduating and got a job with Connair in January 1976. According to ex-Connair pilot Dave Frederiksen, on the day of his interview he walked all the way to the airport from town in his flying school uniform.

They employed him as ‘second crew’, as they did all new graduates, and he flew on the Herons. ‘Second crew’ members were really cabin attendants who got to sit in the cockpit to see how things were done. To be promoted to First Officer he had to be competent at various tasks and he failed his instrument rating, so he was sent to Darwin. It was there that they discovered the ticket forgery, so they dismissed him.

He got another job flying with Ord Air Charter, based in Kununurra, but he still brooded about his time with Connair, which he described in his suicide letter as the happiest seven weeks of his life. He only lasted a couple of months because he would dive at the airstrips and only straighten out at the last minute. After too many complaints from station owners, he was sacked from Ord Air Charter in the September.

For some reason, he blamed Connair for this unhappy chain of events and began plotting his revenge. Christmas was approaching but instead of decorating trees he was making plans and posting death threats. By then, he was living in Mount Isa but he’d worked out that the planes he had access to at the aero club there wouldn’t do enough damage. So after New Year, he drove to Wyndham, where he knew he could get access to planes and he knew where the keys were hidden.

The first plane he tried was a decent-sized flying doctor plane but he could only get one engine going, so he had to leave it and go for a smaller Beechcraft Baron with the registration number VH-ENA. Before he left he wrote in his pilot’s logbook:

“January 5 1977 VH-ENA Wyndham

-Alice Springs Suicide Mission

THE END”

He had a four-hour journey ahead of him but actually took five hours because he circled the plane for an hour. He had wanted to crash at smoko time, which was just after 10am, as he wanted “to kill and maim as many employees of Connair Pty Ltd as possible”.  He’d forgotten about the time-zone differences and didn’t arrive until just before eleven.

As he approached the airport, he switched on his radio and broadcast one final message: “It is better to die with honor than live without it – Echo – November – Alpha.”  Seconds later, he crashed.

Fiorella Nappi says that if someone could have contacted him during the flight, they might have talked him out of it. “It shouldn’t have happened but there was no warning, nothing we could do about it.”

Brian Cairns says that if he had managed to get both engines started on the RFDS plane, he would have run out of fuel before he got to Alice Springs.

Kym Hansen thinks a lot about “what if” as well. He had been out on the town with his mates the night before and he’d arrived at work about 15 minutes before the plane hit. After a “grilling from the boss” he was just walking into the machine shop. If he’d gotten to work on time, perhaps he would have been killed.

As Liana’s mother says, “A tiny little word means everything in life – if.”

Tarla Kramer