Three days earlier, at about 8.30 a.m. on the very morning after the
accident, three mountaineer staff members at Scott Base had managed to
get there in order to search for survivors. And Mr Woodford, who was one
of them, has described the scene in a letter received by the Royal
Commissioner during the public hearings. The letter, which is amplified
in a affidavit put before this Court, is set out later in this judgment.
Mr Woodford explained that when he got to the scene he found a black
flight bag with Captain Collins' name printed on it. It was lying open
on the snow and it was empty. Already material in the form of books and
papers that had not been destroyed when the aircraft disintegrated on
impact had been blown by winds over the ice-slope or into crevasses or
covered by drifting snow. He pointed out that although the cockpit voice
recorder had been located quite quickly when he was back at the crash
site with the party from New Zealand on 2nd December the "black box"
could not be found until later that evening after it had been decided to
begin digging systematically for it. It was found buried under snow at a
depth, he said, of 20 to 30 cms.

But although the bag was empty it was suggested at the hearing that
while at McMurdo Captain Gemmell might have "collected a quantity of
documents from the crash site and brought them back to Auckland"; that
only three of the flight documents carried on the aircraft had been
produced to the Royal Commission; that it was "curious" to find that
each favoured the case "which the airline was now attempting to
advance"; and all this against counsel's theory that before Captain
Gemmell had left Auckland on 29th November he was aware of possible
problems associated with the amendment to the destination point
co-ordinates. Captain Gemmell flatly denied having that knowledge while
in the Antarctic; and he rejected totally any suggestion that he had