Adam Bennett, 47, a former Skydive the Beach instructor and Wollongong High School student, was one of two Australians who lost their lives when a plane crashed at the popular Fox Glacier tourist spot in the South Island on Saturday.

The pilot, three other skydive masters and four overseas tourists, who had been about to go skydiving, all died when the plane burst into flames after take-off at Fox Glacier Airport at 1.15pm on Saturday.

Wollongong's Skydive the Beach owner Anthony Boucaut said Mr Bennett had worked as an instructor at his company for seven years and they had been friends for more than 20 years.

He said Mr Bennett, who was born and raised in Wollongong, left the city 1? years ago to embark on a six-month round-the-world base jumping trip. He had been temporarily living in New Zealand where he was working as an instructor.

"He's been skydiving in excess of 20 years and he did his 10,000th jump not long ago," Mr Boucaut said.

"He was a unique person with an amazing skydiving talent. He was outrageous and the people who jumped with him would certainly remember him.

"His nickname was 'fruit bat'. He spent some time in the tropics and you know what they say, it sends people a bit mad. He had a very big personality and was very good with customers."

Mr Boucaut said the news of the tragic accident would rock the skydiving community.

"It's always a shock when you hear of a death of someone in the fraternity and this was a devastating accident."

In New Zealand yesterday, a team of six Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) investigators and the regional coroner were attempting to get to the crash site.

However, wild weather closing in on the west coast of the South Island could mean they would have to travel by road from Christchurch.

TAIC investigator in charge Ian McClelland would not speculate on the causes of the crash.

"What we do know at this stage was obviously the aircraft was taking off with a full complement of jumpers ... and that the aeroplane impacted on the ground very close to the runway itself," he said.

The Fletcher FU24 aircraft was not required to have a flight recorder, or voice recorder, and did not have these devices aboard.

Coroner Richard McElrea said the bodies of the nine victims would not be brought to Christchurch because of the state of emergency that was in force following Saturday's massive earthquake.

Instead, they would be taken to the Auckland mortuary to be examined by specialist forensic pathologists and forensic staff.