WHO KILLED BRENDA HEAN?

On a cold morning in 1972, Tasmanian society matron, environmentalist and adventurer Brenda Hean took off in a Tiger Moth en route to Canberra. Minutes later, her plane vanished. As Ingrid Pyne discovers, many Tasmanians still wonder who wanted this “troublesome” woman dead?

- Ingrid Pyne

The last known letter from Brenda Hean was sent to her niece late in the winter of 1972, shortly before her mysterious disappearance. In it, Auntie Bren – as all the nieces called her – thanked Diane Rex for hosting her on a recent trip to Melbourne, delighted in Di’s young son, Philip (“never known a more intelligent or loveable child”), extolled her freshly permed hair (“Great improvement. Helps a lot.”) and wrote excitedly about an upcoming “wonderful adventure”.

On September 8, she planned to fly from Hobart to Canberra in a World War II Tiger Moth to lobby federal MPs to save Lake Pedder, a pristine glacial lake in Tasmania’s south-west wilderness. Refined, perfectly coiffed and in her early sixties, Brenda made an unlikely eco warrior. Yet something about Lake Pedder had touched her – the way it touched many – and in its salvation, Brenda found her calling.

And so, she wrote to Di: “off we go to persuade the Powers that Be that we are so devoted to our cause and the enormous future value of keeping Lake Pedder in its original state that we are prepared to risk getting stuck in a large tree top on one of the Strait’s convenient islands.”

Unbeknown to Brenda, she and pilot Max Price risked far worse. Within hours of take-off from Hobart’s Cambridge Airport, the vintage Tiger Moth would vanish. No wreckage or human remains have ever, officially, been found.

Yet, almost half a century on, rumours and questions still obscure the pair’s fate. Many Tasmanians believe the plane’s fuel tank was sabotaged in a politically motivated attack to silence Brenda, but the mystery has never been solved. Perhaps it will remain hidden in the bosom of Tasmania forever, along with the isle’s other dark secrets.

“My own personal view,” Diane tells The Weekly, “is that she was the victim of foul play.”