When we were in East Timor, back in 2017, our guide took us to the location of a downed Australian plane during WWII. He’d suggested that it was a helicopter that his Grandfather had witnessed crash back during WWII, but we weren’t so sure, given that helicopters weren’t really around back then.

I emailed the Australian War Memorial to see if they known anything about a helicopter, but all they replied was;

Dear Ben,

Thank you for your email to the Research Centre regarding this wreckage.

Helicopters were in their infancy during the Second World War, and only really started to be used in warfare during Korea. I can find a lot of aircraft going down in Timor or over the Timor Sea, but no helicopters. 

I hope this has been helpful. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can assist you further.

So I’m fairly sure it was an Aussie plane because of the anglicised letters and numbers on the wreckage.

Either way it was pretty great to find it.

Elise and I went to East Timor for her 30th, where we took a trip from Dili, to Aturo, then off to Balibo, and back to Dili, via Maubisse.

It was a great trip and we found some really great places and met some fascinating people.

This is the original Australian flag painted on the Balibo Hilton by the Balibo 5

This is locally referred to as “The Kissing House” for some pretty gruesome reasons.

It was where a lot of the locals rounded up by the Indonesians were shot.

Here’s a bunch of drone shots of the place too!