The Southern Cloud is Cooma's most eye-catching monument. It is situated prominently on the corner of Sharp St (Snowy Mountains Highway) and Creek St toward the western end of the town, heading toward the mountains. A pleasant park area with a picnic table surrounds it.
The monument was erected in memory of the pilots and passengers of the Southern Cloud, operated by Kingsford Smith and Ulm's Australian National Airlines. The plane crashed in bad weather on 21st March 1931. It was the first commercial passenger plane in the world (as far as I can tell from my research) to disappear. All on board were killed, and the wreckage was not discovered until 1958 in a location that would have been almost completely inaccessible at the time of the accident, on the steep western slopes of the Snowy Mountains. Its discovery was made by Tom Sonter, an employee of the SMHEA, while bushwalking in the vicinity of Tooma Dam.
The disaster and the later discovery of the wreckage are well documented (see links below).
The Southern Cloud memorial was sponsored by the Lions Club of Cooma and designed and engineered by Andrius Rimka A.T.M. (Lithuania), presumably an engineer of the Snowy Scheme. It was opened in 1962. The structure takes the form of a stylized aircraft with extended wings to such an extent that one of my daughters recently informed me that as a child she thought it was a real aeroplane. It is a striking small-scale example of mid-century modernism. Inside the memorial are items found at the crash site: others can be seen at the Tumbarumba Historical Society Museum, the National Museum of Australia in Canberra and other locations. A recorded message, photos and written information are also part of the display.
The remains of the pilots and passengers found at the site of the wreckage were buried in Cooma.
Note: August 2022
In recent months other items have been added to this memorial park, including one to victims of a light plane accident in Cooma in the 1970s. The author finds the design of this item insensitive to the site, and to the Christian iconography that it intends to reference. It resembles a slab for killing vampires (unfortunately). I corresponded with the local paper (Monaro Post) and have received feedback from people of many opinions on this point (i.e. proper design of public monuments) but it has not changed my opinion.
Rowena
A short article about the incident and the finding of the wreckage in 1958
A longer article with more information, photographs and anecdotes
Some technical information about the monument and a brief description of the accident. Monuments Australia is a useful reference site.
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