First Trip up to Tocumwal

Well where do I start with all this? From the beginning! So that puts it back to Feb 12,2011.

I guess it was a bit more sensible at this point - well from my point anyway :-)  I had been in touch with the Tocumwal Historic Aerodrome Museum and made enquiries about the famous "dam" among other things, as I was researching the origins of a load of parts from the shed - mainly Wirraway things. Thanks to Bob Brown at the museum (no not the member of parliament !) I got in touch with the owners of the land where the dam was located. They invited me up to meet them and be taken on a tour of the area. How cool !   After being told there was nothing left by many people I felt like a challenge to see if that was the case.

I had also been told that the locals were a bit averse to the aviation hunters as many instances had occurred in the past of people coming in, sometimes under the cover of night and making off with whatever they could. Thankfully I was greeted with open arms and a friendly attitude that is typical of smaller country towns.

For those that don't know, Tocumwal is approx 275 north of Melbourne (where I live). So it's a bit of a drive. But I set out and the day was fine, though the state was recovering from some of the worst floods in memory up north.

Hang on a sec, you say, why am I talking about a dam and what does it have to do with all this ? Well, Tocumwal was the ww2 Airforce base as mentioned in a previous post, but after the war it was a huge storage facility and then sadly an aircraft killing field where over 700 aircraft were burnt, chopped up, melted down etc. The dam was where any steel or leftover slag etc etc was tipped into. Over the years many have been there and lots removed - many semitrailer loads in fact.

Anyway, I made it up and found my guide Anne, who took me out to the dam. I didn't know what to expect - but if you were driving past you would miss it. This is from the road. - Where is it?  (Look to the centre!) Oh and don't forget to click on the pic for a bigger image.....

Jump the fence and go in - oops, lots of water ! And at this time of the year that means snakes !  I only ever saw one snake in all my time there which was lucky, and it took off in the opposite direction (just as well as it was an Eastern Brown which is one of the most venomous in the world)

Heres a few shots I took around the dam at that point - see any parts you recognise?

At this point I'm thinking "hmmm, maybe something, maybe not"  but made a time and got permission to  go back two weeks later. In the meantime we went onto the property up the road, also owned by the same people. There they showed me some things sitting on top of a pile of rubbish that I was welcome to take if I wished. I recognised them straight away as being the rear tailframe and seat pole for a CAC Wirraway!  Well then , thats a great start :-)

 This would be the first and only time I could ever get a part of the frame of an aircraft into the car !!!

 From the same day, these are a couple of things I picked up from the dam on the day. The gasket appears to be from a Meteor as is the large brown item up in the left - the brown is a combination of heat damage from the smelter and just good ole corrosion and mud. The ring with the teeth around it is an exhaust pipe ring from an Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah engine - most likely from an Avro Anson. The other parts at the bottom of the picture are all US or CAC P-51 Mustang parts.

 To date this one has not been identified, though I am thinking more and more that it is P51, certainly from a USA aircraft though.

 The car boot after the very first trip. You can also see some Mosquito undercarriage rubber struts, an Airspeed Oxford Wing Spar part.and many other bits that I have no idea of !

So the journey begins, and becomes a big part of my life for the next twelve months as I go on what is basically a type of archaeological dig. More to follow over the next few days and weeks.