For some years now I have been trying to locate the surviving Skippy (1960s Australian television series) helicopter VH-AHI with a view towards having it repatriated and preserved in Australia. After serving in PNG it later appeared on the U.S.…
Unexpected
The demand for war memorial furniture here in Australia has been so great, for so long, that it’s now difficult to obtain the military-grade anchors, propellers and guns that were once the entitlement of every R.S.L. club. Next-best-things, such as…
Australia Day Honour
Congratulations to Cliff Robinson who was awarded an Order of Australia today for “services to aviation history, and to the community”. The official citation refers specifically to: Queensland Air Museum Inc: Inaugural Chaplain, since 2012. President 2001-2011. Treasurer, 1996-2000. Fundraiser,…
High Flown Fashion
Going, going….gone.
Aviation heritage has never attracted broad investor interest, the inclusion of such items in high-end auction catalogues being more the exception, than the norm. Indeed, there is no such thing here as a established aeronautica market, as there is say…
Australia dissertations
Why is it that most of what has – and still is – being passed as aviation history in this country, has been written by amateur historians? I use the term [amateur] unpregoreatively here, since it is the case that few of…
High above the Dardanelles
Queenslander Alfred Warner served in the Dardanelles for more than two-and-a-half years, far longer than any of his compatriots, and yet you won’t find his name mentioned in any Australian military history. As Australia’s only airship pilot (and airship station…
Opportunity Lost
Back in 1979 a leading State Museum was offered the nose section of a Douglas A20G Boston. The would-be donor described the aircraft, and it’s salvage, in the following terms…. It came from an entire crashed airplane from which a…
What might have been # 1
The last two decades of the twentieth century may come to be regarded – by anyone reading this, at least – as the halcyon years of Australian aviation heritage. This was an era of unprecedented popular interest and government largesse, an…
What were they thinking?
Only one Australian designed aero engine has ever achieved mass production and commercial success, Jabiru engines having now been in continuous production for more than quarter of a century (and sold to more than thirty-one countries). During the Second World…
School Battle
In North Queensland in the late-1970s it seemed that there were precious few people interested in aviation heritage, or at least that’s how it appeared to this [then] teenage university student. Those few did manage nonetheless to find each other and…
Search for Auster VH-AFK
Last night’s ABC’s 7.30 program featured a story about the renewed search for Auster J5/F VH-AFK which crashed in the rugged Burragorang Valley ranges in October 1954. Although the pilot and sole occupant, Max Haselton, survived the crash he was assumed…
Have we learned anything?
One of only two surviving Mk.1 Jindiviks, A92-22 does a slow rot out the back the Australian Naval Aviation Museum’s 6,000 square metre hangar complex at HMAS Albatross. The former Jervis Bay Range Facility gate guardian is second only to…
A Holden…of sorts
All collecting institutions endure the frustration of never having sufficient space for the display and storage of their – always – expanding collections. This is particularly true for large public institutions, like the Queensland Museum, occupying premium CBD real estate.…
Long and winding road
Built in 1944, former T.A.A. DC-3 VH-CAO has spent almost half its life on the ground, covering more miles by road – in the past thirty-five years – than it has by air. It arrived this evening at the Caboolture…
Nhill ‘s $355,000 grant
The Nhill Aviation Heritage Centre in Western Victoria has recently received a $355,000 grant from the State Regional Growth Fund, to help develop an aviation museum complex incorporating surviving WWII – and pre-war- heritage structures located at the town’s aerodrome.…