Beaver ZK-AXK

In researching the history of the early Beaver topdressers in New Zealand, I found that Beaver ZK-AXK was in fact our earliest example in spite of the fact that ZK-AVL appears as an earlier alphabetical registration.  And I also found that our other three early Beavers, ZK-AVL for James, ZK-AYT for Rural and ZK-AZB for Fieldair were all registered on the same day, 19 December 1951.

Our first Beaver c/n 89 was built in the DH Canada factory at Downsview, Ontario in 1950 and shipped to New Zealand for the agents De Havilland New Zealand Ltd arriving in December 1950.  It is photo'd here being assembled at Mangere in January 1951 by Whites Aviation.

It was registered ZK-AXK on 12/1/51 to Rural Aviation Ltd of New Plymouth, and it is photo'd here looking brand new, at Mangere in January 1951.  Its first flight was on 22/1/51.  It was named Jerry in memory of Rural's topdressing pilot Jerry Hooper who was killed in a Tiger Moth topdressing crash on 3/10/50.  It was the first Beaver in the world to be converted for topdressing operations and you can see the shiny circular hopper and the early version of the hopper outlet underneath the fuselage

Here it is at its home base at Bell Block airfield, New Plymouth with Mt Egmont in the background.

And here is a nice photo of it being loaded by an early topdressing loader, from the Ed Coates collection.

And here it is at work in its element near Raetihi in November 1951 as photo'd by Leo White.  You can see the difficult country it is working over.

It was in similarly difficult country near Mangamahu, North-East of Wanganui that it suffered an engine failure on takeoff on 20/4/54 and crashed on a steep hillside with fatal results.  It was cancelled from the register on 8/7/54.