Can you identify this Swedish beauty ...

[raumatibeach]

Red Rocks is on the south coast of Wellington, it was pretty beaten up and had a bit of graffiti on it.No idea what finally became of it though. Fieldair had part of a dc3 tail leaning against a hanger at Hood when I was a kid in Masterton, one of their old birds is on stilts in Mangaweka now, not sure of the history of the one at MacDonalds in Taupo.

I don't know anything about the Stuart but the owner of the bren gun carrier said there's going to be a few more of them mobile soon, replacement tracks art rare and expensive and a bunch of them got together and got some engineers in China to make up tracks fairly cheaply in comparison to the current prices.He started listing all the bren gun carriers he knew of that were laid up and there's a few around.Track seemed to be the reason most of them weren't mobile, flathead ford parts aren't exactly uncommon in NZ and the bodies apparently aren't too hard to fix.

 

[A4K]

Cheers mate! Don't think I ever made it to Red Rocks, atleast not to my knowledge.

Yeah, the Mangaweka bird is what I meant in the above post - I wrote Fielding (probably thinking of the 'Field Air' markings she used to be in!)

According to the kiwi aircarft images site, the now McDonald's restaurant was originally a USAAF bird, loaned to the RAAF, served 3 Australian Airlines before joining SPANZ, moving to New Zealand in 1961 (as ZK-CAW), served 3 different airlines in NZ after that, and was also loaned to Fiji Airways for a time, went to Field Air as an Ag-bird, and was finally withdrawn from service in 1984. Registration was cancelled in 1990 after a failed attempt to restore it to airworthiness in Wanganui due to lack of funding, and went to Taupo where it was statically retsored and windows modified. Displayed at the Aeroplane car company's lot before finally being sold to the McDonald's next door as an extension of the restaurant...
Long story, but so typical of aircraft like the Dakota! Here's the site link: http://www.kiwiaircraftimages.com/aviation.html

Re the Red Rocks Dak - check out that site's info on ZK-APB...possibly the same bird.

Great news on the Bren gun carriers...would love to see more of them around. (Only seen the static Waiouru examples myself so far, and a cut down run-around in Australia. Will post a pic if I have it here)

Evan