Shortly after a converted passenger plane crashed near Donald Henderson’s home, his phone rang with a job offer.
The semi-retired farmer picked up the call and nodded, thinking, “Oh, that’s something different”.
Next thing he knew he was on his hands and knees cleaning up the wreckage from the first Boeing 737 to go down on Australian soil.
On February 6 last year, the Coulson Aviation large air tanker was fighting fires in the Fitzgerald River National Park, 460 kilometres south-east of Perth, when it “pancaked” onto bushland.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau found the aircraft had hit a ridge line while dropping fire retardant to aid fire crews on the ground.
Mr Henderson, who is based around 200km east of the crash site in Esperance, was stunned.
“As a person who fills the water bombers here with State Emergency Service, [I was] mortified,” he said.
Miraculously, the two pilots walked away virtually unscathed.
A short while later Mr Henderson — who owns a crane, a tilt-tray and “was available” — was part of the team to clean it up.
He said it was hot, eye-opening work, cutting the body of the plane apart with a demolition saw and picking up 40 kilogram pieces of debris that had blown 100 metres away from the site.
While much of the plane was taken to Perth for scrap metal, Mr Henderson was determined to document the important piece of local history.
He knew just the place for it.
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