Hartwig was the first Missionary Aviation Fellowship pilot in Papua New Guinea, who, with his young family, had come to Madang in April 1951.

On 7 May he took his first operational flight in the Australian registered Auster aircraft, VH-KAN.

It was a promising start and many hours of flying were logged over the next three months.

However, late in the afternoon of Monday 6 August, the aircraft was reported overdue after a day’s flying in the Highlands.

The fate of the radio-less aircraft and its pilot might have remained a mystery but a local schoolteacher at a mission outpost near the Asaroka Gap had seen an aircraft that afternoon circling in and out of cloud.

Then he had heard an impact on the mountain.

Immediately two boys were sent to take a message to Asaroka, but it would still be another day and a half before the aircraft and the body of its pilot were located, 100 metres below the Gap.

Not long before, Hartwig had written a prophetic comment in a report: ‘A local knowledge of the weather and topography is essential, and familiarisation flights will be of great value in this respect.’

It was PNG’s rugged terrain dotted with isolated hamlets where mission stations were set up that brought the fledgling Missionary Aviation Fellowship into existence.

Three years earlier, a small group of Christian airmen returning to civilian life after the war met at a Melbourne bible college to discuss how using their wartime military training to provide an air service.

The Auster Harry Hartwig took to PNG in 1951 and in which he was later killed when it crashed in the Asaroka Gap

This led to the founding of Missionary Aviation Fellowship in Australia – although at the outset, it was not clear which areas most needed the services of such an operation.

MAF is now the longest-serving aviation operator in PNG and is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year.

It has a team of around 100 national and 40 international staff spread across 11 bases, and partners with local church groups, missionaries, NGOs, development and relief agencies, and government departments working to change the lives of people living in remote areas.

For some of the most remote parts of PNG and the world, MAF’s presence is still as critical as it was 70 years ago ensuring that remote communities can have access to healthcare, education, safe water and the Gospel.