AustLit

Written by Edith Marden, of Melbourne, in memory of James Guthrie Westray. Westray had been a passenger on the Stinson airliner which crashed in the Lamington National Park, in February 1937, and he died from injuries sustained during a fall, whilst going for assistance. At the time, the Stinson crash and rescue attracted a good deal of attention in the Australian press, which in turn triggered a wave of patriotic and pro-British fervour, in which Westray (an Englishman) was portrayed as a hero who gave his life whilst trying to save fellow crash survivors. This poem appeared in The Courier-Mail in a report on the unveiling of the Westray Monument, which was located some distance from the crash site, near the Mt. Lindesay border gate, on the then named New England Highway, at the crest of the McPherson Range, south of Brisbane.