1931 Avro Ten Southern Cloud disappearance

Investigation and 1958 rediscovery

The Southern Cloud's fate remained a mystery for 27 years until 26 October 1958. On that day, Thomas Sonter, a carpenter from New Zealand employed on the Snowy Mountains Scheme, made a chance discovery of the wreck while hiking. The crash site was in heavily timbered mountainous terrain within the Snowy Mountains about 25 km east of the direct Sydney–Melbourne route, near Jagumba. Not only was the wreckage off course, it was facing the wrong direction. Investigations concluded that the severe weather conditions at the time of the flight most likely contributed to the crash.

A man named Stan Baker had been booked to fly on the fateful journey, but cancelled and travelled by train instead. As a result of the aircraft's disappearance, he harboured a lifelong fear of flying – which was proved justifiable when he was killed in the 1950 Australian National Airways Douglas DC-4 crash.

In Don Bradman's book Farewell to Cricket he mentions that he flew in Southern Cloud with pilot Shortridge from Adelaide to Melbourne, then to Goulburn not long before the tragedy. He described the trip as a 'bumpy journey'.

After the discovery of the wreckage, a large memorial incorporating salvaged parts from the plane was erected in the nearby town of Cooma. The crash site is 1 mi north west from Deep Creek Dam; there is a small stream adjacent to the crash site named Shortridge Creek which is a tributary of Deep Creek a short way downstream of the dam. It is unclear when the pilot's name was assigned to the stream or by whom.