Temora Aviation Museum
October 2005 Flying Weekend

by Brett Green

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Temora is a small town in country New South Wales, around 5 hours drive south-west of Sydney.

This rural area housed 2 EFTS (Elementary Flying Training School) as part of the Empire Air Training scheme during WWII. More than 2,000 pilots graduated to RAF and RAAF service from this school.

Today, appropriately, Temora Airport houses the most impressive collection of flying warbirds in Australia. Eight times a year, these remarkable specimens take to the air.

I travelled down the Hume Freeway and onto the winding backroads to witness this flying weekend. It was fabulous.

Amongst the treasures at Temora are the world's only flying Hudson, Australia's sole airworthy Spitfire (a Mk.VIII in the striking 457 Sqn markings of Bobby Gibbes), a Wirraway, Canberra bomber, Meteor, Vampire T.35, Tiger Moth, Ryan STM, Cessna O-2 and Dragonfly. All these aircraft flew over the course of the weekend.

Indeed, as if this was not enough, they were also joined by an immaculately restored Boomerang, Australia's stop-gap home-grown fighter. One of the highlights of the weekend was to see the Hudson, Spitfire and Boomerang flying formation.

These are only a few of the photos taken over the two days. I will be posting more images and video footage of the weekend in the coming weeks.

Photography

The photographs were taken with my Nikon D70 digital SLR, alternating lenses between the 24-120mm AF-S VR and my inexpensive (less than AUD$200) 70-300mm AF-G.

ISO was set to 800 for the unstabilized 70-300 lens to permit a faster shutter speed. In future, however, I will set the ISO lower to encourage a slower shutter speed. In the bright sunlight, the 1/4000 sec exposure completely stopped the propellers, with slightly surreal results for in-flight shots!

Museum Details

If you are driving between Sydney and Melbourne, a visit to Temora Aviation Museum is well worthwhile. Leave yourself an extra couple of hours for the detour to Temora, and another couple of hours for a thorough look at the Museum.

Details are:

Temora Aviation Musem
Hangar 1, Menzies Street,
Temora   NSW   2666

Phone +61 2 6977 1088

website: http://www.aviationmuseum.com.au
email: info@aviationmuseum.com.au

Check the Museum website for details of future flying days.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

Images and Text Copyright © 2005 by Brett Green
Page Created 03 October 2005
Last updated 03 October 2005

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