Heart of the Beast Cessna 183 and a Half at Wanaka

Gareth Arscott attended Warbirds Over Wanaka 2026 having travelled from England and he was intrigued with a Cessna fuselage that was on the airfield.  He couldn't find anything about N6188Z and it was as though it didn't exist.  So he asked me if we could find out anything about it.  And it turned out to be quite an interesting story. 

The story went like this - the fuselage marked as N6188Z was in fact cobbled together from the remains of a Cessna 182 and a Cessna 185 by a local metal worker.  Apparently the forward fuselage was from a 182 that crashed in the Wairau Valley a couple of years ago (but we are not sure of the registration), and the tailboom of a 185 was grafted on to replicate a crashed aircraft for the Brad Pitt film "Heart of the Beast".  The bottom cowling was from Cessna 185 ZK-MUR which overturned near Mavora Lakes on 2/10/21 (but is still current).

Then the fuselage was painted with the fictitious registration N6188Z and the colour scheme of the Cessna A185F amphibious floatplane ZK-DWW which was owned at the time by Darlington Drilling and Piling Ltd of Blenheim (Nigel Griffith).  Nigel flew ZK-DWW for the film and it "crashed", which is were the Cessna 183 and a half fuselage comes in.

And here is a photo of ZK-DWW being filmed for the film (thanks to the Cessna 180/185 Facebook group).  Nigel Griffith did all the flying for the film.

"Heart of the Beast" is an adventure survival film starring Brad Pitt that is set in Alaska but was filmed on location around Queenstown Lake Wakatipu, Milford Sound and in the Mt Aspiring National Park, and it has just been released in cinemas.