Without going into too much detail of what we remember about witnessing the crash happen on TV that night, and what exactly happened, we heard a rumour as to why the footage was not shown on air again after the first time. In fact, we have never seen the footage since … anywhere.
We remember hearing about it on the radio all day, and we sat glued to our televisions all night waiting for the footage to come on the local news.
Rumour has it, the reason why the footage was only shown on the news once, and not again in later bulletins, was the Australian Federal Government stepped in and stopped it from being aired again.
On one hand, people didn’t want to glorify an accident and see it over and over again in their lounge rooms, similar to what they did with September 11 and the planes hitting the Twin Towers. After some time the government banned the continual playing of the footage.
On the other hand, the people of the Northern Territory didn’t like the idea or the knowledge that the Government of Australia had decided what they could, and could not watch; especially as the Northern Territory had founded itself as a Territory because it didn’t want to be a state that was told what to do by the Australian Federal Government. The people and the local government had always carried out things their own way; hence, the open speed limit. So, being told you couldn’t see “that footage” again, was a bit of a slap in the face to the Territorian people at the time.
Maybe it wasn’t the Australian Federal Government at all, but this was the rumour on the day.
