Visit the Aviation Pioneers Memorial and learn about the first commercial air crash in Australia, Charles Kingsford Smith’s the Southern Cloud.  The memorial is located on the corner of Sharp & Boundary St.  The Lions Club of Cooma erected the memorial using some of the aircraft wreckage of the Southern Cloud.  The aircraft was flying between Sydney and Melbourne in 1931.  Consequently it crashed in the Snowy Mountains in a very remote area.  After that it remained a mystery, what had happened to the plane?  Eventually the wreckage was discovered in 1958 by a worker on the Snowy Scheme.  Recorded information is available at the memorial.  A model of the aircraft is on display at the Cooma Visitors Centre.  There is another memorial located on the other side of the mountains just outside Tumbarumba.