September 10th, 2026Kookaburra set to fly in Daylesford museum

The Local’s journalist Kate Foulds tells the tale of a familiar kookaburra insignia and how a simple story passed down by her family unlocked a “momentous” event in Daylesford’s history.

A beautiful bronze kookaburra was a familiar fixture above the kitchen stove in our family home. I can’t remember the first time I asked Dad about the kookaburra. Perhaps he told me before I asked. But there comes a time when it feels right to share a story.
On Thursday August 20, 2026, that day arrived for my father.
Leading Daylesford Museum volunteer curator Gary Lawrence and I across paddocks the Rodda family farmed at Musk for generations, my father, Neil Rodda, reminisced about potato farming and pine tree planting before pulling up at an old fenceline.
“My father, Harold Rodda, used to tell a story about a plane he called The Kookaburra crashing in heavy fog on Wheelers Hill,” Neil said. “It was a biplane, a two-wing plane, struggling in the fog. It was foggy as foggy, the plane was coming in from the north, flying over the Rodda family farm on Wheelers Hill, when they got a bit of a break in the fog and the pilot tried to land but got his undercarriage or wheels caught in a fence. It somersaulted and flipped over…crashed in the paddock here.
“At the time, my father’s cousin, Bill Rodda, was working with his father in the shed cutting seed potatoes and they were only 100 metres away, right on the spot. We have aeroplanes fly over every day now but back then it was very rare to see an aeroplane and that would have got them going straight away and drawn them out of the shed. It was something out of the ordinary, like if a jet came flying over really low now, you’d go out and have a look.
“The authorities came up from Melbourne, the aviation people, and they dismantled the plane into smaller pieces. They employed my father, Harold Rodda, to help cart the plane pieces to Musk Railway Station and load it onto the railway truck to be taken back to Melbourne… my father told me he helped cart part of the wreckage down to the station on horse and dray and got paid to do that.
“He called the plane The Kookaburra and there was a bronze kookaburra emblem attached to the plane. Dad took that emblem and we’ve had it in our house ever since.”
Later, over a cuppa, Neil says it feels a little strange moving the bronze kookaburra from its central position above the kitchen stove. However, any uneasiness about his decision to donate the kookaburra insignia to Daylesford Museum dissipates when Gary passes him a photo of the Westland Wapita Biplane wreckage he had heard so much about but never seen.
Neil is thrilled to learn newspaper articles and a photograph published in the Daylesford Advocate on October 11, 1932 verify the essence of his father’s tale, while shedding light on facts surrounding the Kookaburra Training Squadron aircraft and the “airmen’s remarkable escape” from the wreckage site at “a fallowed paddock owned by Mr W. Rodda” in Musk Creek.
The article revealed “a chain of fencing was torn away” as “the machine rolled over across a ditch” before crashing through another fence and winding up “lodged upside down in the paddock”. It also detailed how Mr W. Rodda, his son and his sister, Miss Ada Rodda, aided the airmen they were “amazed” to see “crawl from beneath the upturned machine with only a few scratches”. The article described how the Rodda family “rendered every assistance and took the men to their home, washed their wounds and gave them refreshments”.
Research also confirmed Doctor Peter Harper treated the three men, who were on a cross-country cruise from the RAAF Laverton Base for “abrasions, cuts and shock” while “news of the crash spread quickly in Daylesford” with “a steady stream of cars on the Musk Road” alongside many walking and riding bicycles to view the wreckage.
An unexpected revelation was that Sergeant Langley, one of the three airmen aboard the aircraft, “a nephew of Mrs F. Bolton and Miss Langley of Glenlyon” had taken the chance to drop a message to his relatives a few minutes before the crash.
The newspaper excerpt Gary brought with him stating that a few minutes prior to the crash “the plane circled over Mrs Bolton’s residence, and Sergeant Langley dropped a message to his relatives”. I wonder what was in the letter that was delivered before the plane crashed into the “ploughed field in Musk”? While that question may never be answered, Gary said the kookaburra story demonstrated how a simple object could tell myriad stories.
“With something like the kookaburra you initially think, ‘how does that relate to anything?’ but it’s telling a story about something momentous that happened here. A plane crashing on a farm and how the farmers helped the airmen in that situation, the local photographer from Daylesford soon heard about it and raced out to take a photo of this event It’s a big story that can be told from something very small when you first see it, and not all that obvious.”
Gary said the kookaburra insignia was also a war story. “It’s a war story really, that’s why these airmen were up flying around doing training and they’ve flown past Glenlyon apparently because one of the airmen was related to someone down in the town, it’s got that lovely touch to it, so there’s a bit of family history related to that.

“It’s like rings of stories and there’s bound to be other people in the district that have this same sort of connection with something that happened in their family, every family was touched by the war, whether it’s World War II, Vietnam or Korea, it just goes on and on, so something very simple can lead to an endless number of stories.
“At our museum we’re connected into those rings that connect to the district and if you went to the Melbourne Museum they’re more concerned with the greater rings so it’s like each area looks after their particular part of that story, it’s like a Venn diagram, there’s the Daylesford connection, the Glenlyon connection, there’s the war story, there’s the airforce and they interact and cross over at different points.”
But Gary said stories could be easily lost if they’re not shared. “So often families will have things like this, someone’s elderly and passed on, and the family come back to clear up things and have forgotten about the story and look at something like the kookaburra and throw it out or take it to the op shop, then the story’s gone,” he said.
Gary said the kookaburra story demonstrated how some of the region’s most important stories are preserved and shared through seemingly unassuming items.
“A lot of people come to the museum and see something big and spectacular and think ‘oh, isn’t that beautiful’ but there may not be any story to it so what’s the point of it being there, when in fact someone might bring along a scrap of paper that’s got something very significant tied to a family story and that for a museum is far more valuable than that beautiful piece of furniture.”
Gary said he was excited to welcome the kookaburra into the Daylesford Museum collection, but families could also choose to share a photograph and accompanying story with the museum. “A photograph and story about the item is better than nothing, the highest priority is grabbing that story before there’s a disconnection, that’s the most important thing,” Gary said.
Meanwhile, Neil is looking forward to visiting the kookaburra once it’s settled into the museum. “It makes sense, as the museum will be there forever. The kookaburra will fascinate a lot of people and won’t be lost or buried.”