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The memorial at the
Southern Cloud crash site.
Photo: Matthew Higgins.
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Its mysterious disappearance and the loss of the eight people on board captured the nation's attention.
Southern Cloud was one of five Avro X aircraft operated by Australian National Airways.
The company was founded in 1929 by aviation pioneers Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm.
The aircraft wreckage was found by accident more than 20 years later. A worker on the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme discovered the plane near Deep Creek in 1958. Within days hundreds of people visited the site, many collecting souvenirs.
John Boddington, of Dalton, near Goulburn, bought the battered clock components in 1958 from a classmate at Canberra Grammar School, Alan Reid.
Alan's father was the former Canberra political journalist Alan Reid. Alan junior visited the site with his father and souvenired the clock from the aircraft's instrument panel.
More than 75 years after the plane went down, John donated the clock to the National Museum in Canberra.
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