Moorabbin Airport Museum

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Having driven past it a few thousand times over the years I dropped in this afternoon.

 

The museum is a credit to the volunteers who've put 5o years of work in.

 

The undercover exhibits are painted to as new condition, there's an original Bensen Gyrocopter, and even an early Ultralight complete with kitchen chair and one cylinder engine. You can sit at the controls of a DeHavilland Heron, get a close up of an F111 escape module, look at a Mirage, and a variety of equipment engines. The J.A. Prescott engine in the photo was a 1910 model from an aircraft built by Laurie Marshall from Heidelberg in the days when Australia was leading the world in aircraft innovation, most of them built in garages and towed by the tail behind the family car to somewhere like Point Cook for testing. I thought Japs were Japanese for many years, but it's interesting to see the leading builder of light engines in the world for a few decades was British. The simplicity of the magneto timing was equisite (unless you had a bird strike). Stamp the gears once and you could pull the engine apart, put it back togather and start it every time.

 

Outside they've rebuilt the hangar from Casey Airfield which houses the his and hers aircraft of Lord and Lady Casey, along with a good representation of Jet Aircraft from the very early days - late '40's Goucester Meteor, Sabre, and early airliners Heron, Dove, and even the fuse of a Catalina that used to be a house boat on the Murray, which sailed past me one night.

 

There was a DC3 out there and as I walked up I heard a supervisor telling an old guy in starched white overalls with a crew driver in his had to fit this panel here, that panel there and that panel over there under the fuse. I wondered if the panels would ever qualify as airworthy after a few twists with the Philips screwdriver and walked on.

 

As I came back around the aircraft a few minutes later the door opened and out stepped Facthunter's grandfather, (no I only made that up). It was one of those moments when you wished you had a tape recorder and camera.

 

It was the old guy, who used to fit those panels when he was a Captain of an ANA DC3 doing two flights a week from Melbourne to Tasmania.

 

He had no time for Reg Ansett as a person, said he was very standoffish, but Reg gave him the ability to fly.

 

He used to pay seventeen shillings and hour for flying lessons, and worked as a baggage handler for the Ansett flights to pay for the lessons. Every two weeks Reg would fly in with pay packets for the pilots in one pocket and pound notes in the other for the support staff.

 

I can recall ANA aircraft sitting on the tarmac at Essendon, and they were the Ferraris of the day with spectacular colour scheme, extra trim and eye catching signwriting - left all the other aircraft for dead.

 

He went on to fly 747's for Singapore Airlines, and said when he got there they had over 30 ex Ansett Pilots.

 

Australians started Singapore Airlines, Malaysian Airlines and Emirates and so on, a living legend.

 

Visit the museum; you might get to talk to him too.