Grandma

The restaurant at the Forest Hill Shopping Centre features the rather unique flying machine shown here. When "Grandma" first took off she created quite a stir. Peter Von Czarnecki had created a poster to announce Grandma's "maiden" voyage. Peter, in his usual style "stretched" the truth a little with a headline that read "Grandma Downs Hun... Heroine destroys Red Baron" and went on to say how Granny had flown the plane that shot down Baron Von Richtofen, the famous "Red Baron" in 1917 in a daring and gallant dogfight over France, how "Granny's" plane was also involved in the search for Amelia Aerheart, overdue and missing during her ill-fated flight, just before World War II and how the plane was designed by the Wright Brothers. A Melbourne museum phoned to say he was "misleading children".






		Grandma on a surveillance flight over Forest Hill.

Like all Peter Von creations, "Granny" began with a journey to a scrap metal yard. The "treasure" this time was a vast quantity of aluminium tubing. The propellers came from "some sort of food processing machine", the propeller hubs were once differential housings and motorcycle sprockets. Granny sits earing leather boots in a Victorian Oak wheelchair from where she steers the plane "constantly correcting it in a vague indeterminate manner" with a steering wheel adapted from a washing-machine drive pulley.

The original drawing for Grandma's aeroplane.

Peter Von in the "hanger" preparing Grandma for take-off.

The start of Granny's plane... a plentiful supply of aluminuim tubing from a scrap metal yard.

Grandma's aeroplane under construction.
Here you can see the aluminium framework.




		The famous "Oak barrel from the Hearst Mansion" takes to the air, before being fitted to the plane.