The mystery over the missing Malaysian jet has everyone thinking about air travel. Here are a few facts from Guyana’s aviation story:
- I was once told that if a plane crashes in Guyana you have onlya week or so to find it before the foliage grows over it. This may sound fanciful but – even in England – planes still turn up from WW2, sunk in boggy land.
- John ‘Dynamite’ Melville brought the southern savannahs their first vehicle, delivered in a plane, in 1947. It’s said that Melville was immensely strong, and could lift a pony over his head. He once challenged a senior New York zoologist to a duel, causing the entire expedition to scatter in panic.
- The airstrip in this photo is Port Kaituma. It was here on 18 November 1978, the gunmen from the People’s Temple at Jonestown killed US Congressman Ryan and several newsmen. The survivors of this shoot-out (which was the precursor to the massacre) had to spend the night at Citrus Grove, which was better known as Bottom Floor. Here, all that the survivors found were a few shacks and a grog-shop called the Rum House. The dozen or so Americans would spend the most frightening night of their life, listening to cries of pain and the sound of a tropical forest screaming itself to sleep.
- Forbes Burnham threw his weight behind the liberation movements in Angola and Mozambique, by allowing Cuban planes to refuel in Guyana en route to war.
