Tocumwal at dawn

What is there not to like about arriving at a great place with this sort of sunrise - cold, yes but worth the drive alone. Less than half an hour later there were numerous contrails in the sky to the east as a number of commercial aircraft made their way from Melb/Tas to Sydney and beyond. The lasting memory I have of this is driving into Tocumwal listening to "Theme From Midnight Cowboy" by Faith No More and seeing these in the sky. One of those "you had to be there" moments but just amazing to see and made me glad once again to be living in Australia !

First pic is taken from inside the dam looking roughly Northwest as the sun came up

And this pic was as I arrived at the dam. Taken from the roadside. If you click on the pic for a larger image and look directly to the centre you will see at the ground level in the distance the outline of the engine test cells. Tiny blots but they are there and one of the few remaining landmarks from the great WW2 base. I hope to be there soon to do some photo essays on them before they finally succumb to the elements.

April 2, 2011

I did make two more trips in between the last post and this one, but did not take any pictures at the time. I was more focused on spending the time digging around and working out the possible layout of the dam.

As it was April the days were already shortening and I found myself arriving at Tocumwal just as the skies started to lighten. On the way I encountered a huge number of cyclists riding thru the night on the outskirt of Shepparton - apparently some sort of training exercise. Here is the Sportavia glider on the pole in town at dawn - nice!

Of course it was also starting to get rather cold in the mornings which suited me anyway as I would not end up so dehydrated from the heat !

When it was brighter I took some more pics. By now the dam had dried out and was home to a lot of hibernating lizards, frogs and all sorts of bugs, some of which gave me a fright when they came racing out over my gloves !  This is the edge of the dam by the side of the road - very heavily overgrown and with bits of wire and metal sticking out - if you didn't watch what you were doing you would end up on your bum very quickly !!

Here you can see my buckets to the right and the edge of where I spent most of my time working on during the year. Looks pretty messy, smelled dreadful and the thorns and prickles were a constant battle - but as you will se I think it was worth it !!

The area I was working on - the back wall of the dam. Already I have pulled out a lot of unsalvageable stuff, the time in the ground, moisture and salinity among other things has contributed to these parts demise. I pulled out Beaufighter ammo chutes and thought my Xmas had arrived but they literally fell apart in my hands :-(

However, what was fascinating and worth the effort, was the fact that I was discovering parts from the same aircraft all in one particular spot. For example to the upper right of the white buckets, there was a lot of all sorts on the top surface but about a foot down there was a cache of CAC Wirraway parts - flare chute tops, ammo chutes, u bolts, data mod plates etc etc. And then to the left of that there was a large lot of P-51 Mustang parts - again all undisturbed since the scrapping times. So you could work out a pattern where they would have been scrapping a load of P-51's and then getting the remains and tipping them out in that spot . These spots would continue to yield parts right up until the end.

There were also layers of ash and aluminium slag which I will put pics up of in a future post. To me, it looked like they covered sections with wood and then burnt it all again - this after being thru the smelters already. It's only a theory but makes sense as they would no doubt be trying to compact the scrap down as much as possible and the floor of the dam which was about two and a half metres down appeared to be covered by a decent amount of ally slag. But there were definite layers present - I am really glad I did not go in with anything other than my tools as backhoes etc would have destroyed all that.

Oh hey look - another canopy !  This is a CAC Wirraway - sure it's seen better days but it was there buried and left behind by many other treasure hunters from over the years - and in better condition than many of the ones I had seen!

Another day was done and it was time to head home (and drop into the SPC Cannery in Shepparton for some bargains as well)  Once home I cleaned up a few bits to see what they looked like.

This is from a CAC Boomerang - yet to figure out what it is exactly. Looks like an ammo chute but very small - maybe some sort of air duct...

 One of the Flare Chute lids from a CAC Wirraway

 The next few photos show my *ahem* workbench at home. Plenty of parts to work on - the B24 covering is already cleaning up nicely, but the other parts have a long way to go !

 Quite a few bends in the canopy frame, from all the things chucked on top of it after it was thrown in the tip.

 The following week I was back but just to show my family the place that I had been going to - my wife was good enough to take pics of me standing in the dam!

Man on a mission - standing on the road next to the dam at Tocumwal, April 2011  :-)

 That will do for this week, still finding more pics to add !!!

Second Trip - Feb 24, 2012

This time around I had a better idea of what to expect and what I would need to do. The dam was still loaded up with water but the weather was better. In order to make the most of things, I had to prepare properly. So - 4 litres of water for fluid, thermos of coffee, fruit, lunch, sunscreen, mosquito repellent, hat - oh yeah, and the tools including face mask, gloves and glasses !

Having looked over the area previous I felt that there was probably a bit still buried underneath, how far down I really did not know. What I did feel strongly was that this approach had to be done carefully and delicately - ie no thumping around with backhoes, excavators etc. Remember this stuff has been in the ground since around 1945, and given the proximity to the Murray River, there is a lot of salt in the earth, so the corrosion factor would be massive, and anything remaining would need to be removed with caution.

And so my regular routine began - awake at 3am (sometimes 2.30am, more like 4am in the winter), get the items ready and get into the car and off I go !

I have always enjoyed driving and moving thru the streets of Melbourne and onto the interstate highways at that late time of night. You get to hear all sorts of things on the radio, and my favourite was BBC World News - learnt a massive amount !  But the signals dropped out heading into Shepparton so I would switch to music.

For those that may be interested my music tastes are very diverse and listened to a lot of things including dozens of Blue Note Jazz Remasters, Bargrooves Deep House compilations, bands such as The Strokes, Faith No More, Underworld and more that I cannot recall.  Some of those tracks I will forever remember with certain things happening on the road trip up or back...more of that some other time.

Anyway,I arrived and entered thru the fence and set up on the far side of the dam - that was where the least amount of water was. There were plenty of frogs carrying on, but aside from that, it was silent, and that was a great way to get started.

I noticed a piece of metal sticking up about a third of the way up the back of the dam wall, and when I went to pull it out it would not budge. So I got out my trusty garden trowel, one of the most useful things I worked with. I could feel the metal curving away deep in the pile, so I got to work. The key was to keep sticking my gloved hand underneath the metal and feel what lay ahead in the ground as it was obviously a decent size.....

Four hours later, I am extremely knackered, out of breath (unfit indeed) but holding the below item

 It's a canopy from a CAC Boomerang. It's not complete but more complete and in much better condition than other ones I have seen. I was amazed that this had been missed - it was upside down in the ground though!

 Here it is just out of the car after I returned home later in the day. It's now looking even better these days as I have been working on it getting it all cleaned and polished - still a way to go though !

 Now even though I was exhausted I still managed to uncover a couple of other parts as well. They are above. I found a faint number beginning with 32P on it and recognised that at once as a Consolidated B24 Liberator Bomber part. The question was, what?  When I returned home I emailed a picture to the B24 Restoration Group to see if they recognised it. It even caught them off guard !! So the following week I ambled down to see them and we went over the parts list and sure enough it turns out to be a shroud cover that wraps around the supercharger near the engine - 32P being Powerplant. What was different was the bubble (I assume its an air intake or similar) was not present on the shrouds on the restored B24 that they were restoring. Mine is from an earlier model.

And it was at this point I met my first and only snake - well, it wasn't really interested in hanging around anyway and shot off in another direction. Big though, reckon close to 6ft long. I reckon it's knock off time.

So, completely worn out and aching all over - digging at an angle for more than four hours really hurts if you haven't done it before -  time to pull up stumps and head home. I stop on the way and take a few pics of the wonderful hangars at the back of the airport. There are only two left now, both used as storage. The sheer size of them is amazing. Have a look at the sheep in the shade in the pics and you get the idea (click for bigger images)

I spent the trip home listening to more music and talking to a number of people about the finds. In addition to these things I found more Meteor parts, and a load of parts that have not been identified to this day. I will put a section up on mystery objects later on.

But before I got in the bath and enjoyed a well deserved cold beer, I took some more shots of the canopy so I could let a couple of friends see what I had found.

A great day

More in a bit !

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.

Well now......

I just looked at the last post date - ooops, that would be July 2011 !  Sorry for not doing anything sooner.

I have been caught up in a heap of endeavours of late, some taking a lot longer than they ought to, some just trickling along.

But to put it all into a nutshell :

I have been continuing to work on clearing out the old Hudsons' Stores in inner Melbourne each week. (and I thought the shed was full of stuff !)

I have also being making a regular trek nearly 300kms to the north of Melbourne to a place called Tocumwal, which was home to one of the biggest USAF/RAAF bases during the early stages of WW2 and later became an aircraft killing field when over 700 aircraft were melted down for aluminium. Why did I go there? Well, a lot of parts that Grandad had acquired had obviously come from there when the aircraft were pulled apart and also the same from Hudsons - I will put up a pic of a piece with the original 7CRD (Central Recovery Depot) tag from Tocumwal that turned up in the Hudsons factory. There was a "dam" that was where the remains from the smelters were tipped into and this has been a source of fascination for researchers and hunters alike over the years

Due to respecting the landowners request for no trespassing from the "cowboy element" I have kept pretty quiet about it all and made the trip every couple of weeks for a year. However I received word today that someone else had moved in with a huge excavator and carved out the dam, and will aim to fill it in when done. Now that this has happened I feel it's probably time to share with you all the times I have spent on that and the things I have found.

I have also been looking after the Tocumwal Historic Aerodrome Museum - which was a gift to the museum and the town as a way of saying thankyou for letting me rummage around the lands and talk to the locals. The website for that is www.tham.org.au  

If you are ever up that way, I do suggest stopping in the town and going out to the old airfield - it's so incredibly peaceful up there. I always found time to gather my thoughts and relax while standing in the middle of the dam with next to no noise, just the sound of a distant aeroplane or truck, or the local birds soaring overhead.....

Time to sort out my photos. Will be back soon......

Saved from the tip !

No this is not the big thing I am working on - but rather an amazing stroke of good luck.

I was tipped off by a colleague that there was a CAC Wirraway forward fuselage frame that was in danger of being sent to the tip due to a business split up. Strange as it was, the fuse was located in a meatworks in the south eastern suburbs. The places that these things turn up !!!!

Anyway, I don't have a trailer or towbar so a couple of panicked phone calls around and I found a more than willing person to go and pick them up.

I got a text message about an hour later followed by a phone call - "Do you realise how much stuff there is?" Me : "um, one maybe two sections"  My Collector - "Nope, try four and there are also parts for what looks like Oxford or Anson as well "

Uh-oh.....

So Sunday arrives and we are entertaining friends who are back here from overseas on a flying visit. I am out in the garden for some reason when I hear one of the kids screaming "There's a big hairy man at the door and he looks like Hagrid"   - out of the mouths of babes...most embarrasing.

I walk out and just about faint on the spot....there is a massive amount of metal tubing all twisted together. These frames came from the aircraft scrapping ops at Tocumwal some fifteen years ago and you can see that the farmers had got to them prior as there are lots of bits cut out etc. Some is rusted beyond saving but I work out I should be able to get a close to complete frame...

But how many different aircraft are there in this lot ?

After "Hagrid" had gone (sorry Norm - I know they don't mean it"  I look at the over full driveway and start assessing. I quickly realise much to my delight that there are no less than seven different CAC Wirraway frame parts here. Most are around the rollover frame and rear gunner seat mount. Pretty cool. Then I find what is tantamount to gold - one has an ID stamp on it - dated 21st April 1942. So I will be able to work out the exact aircraft this part came from. And the other frame parts turn out to be part of the rear fuselage for an Avro Anson. What a haul !

Bear in mind that these frames are 70 years old and have probably spent a long time outdoors after being stripped, so I am happy to work on them and get them back to life.  To save them from the tip is equally as important as there is not much of this stuff left and once its gone, its gone...so for the price of a trailer for a few hours its worth its weight in gold.

I have managed to get all bar two frames into the garage - grandad would have most pleased with my efforts though the rest of the family are now convinced I am bonkers...the other two frames are in the garden where I am working on checking the missing pieces from diagrams and making plans accordingly.

Till next time !

 So here are the frames - the one on the left is the most complete, still with gun mounts and instrument panel mounts at the front. You can see three rollover frames (with the pointed top section) in the pic.

 The ID stamp for the Avro Anson parts - R3 is Avro Anson

 The ID tag for the Wirraway

Parts of the Avro Anson rear fuselage

Keep watching - something is happening////

No I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.

And I would dearly love to share with you the current project that I am doing

But I can't............yet   :-)

It will be worth it (Well, at least I think so) so please be patient.

Oh remember those Beaufighter wheels that I posted about ?  Well after much chasing and researching I acquired the legs to go with them. Now of course that would be easy right?  Well, sort of.  I have three legs now (can a plane do Jake the Peg impersonations?)  but one is quite different from the other two. It leads me to think that one type is Australian and the other is British. Not only that but the matched pair look like they have been fitted up to a Beaufort at some point - both only have one brake attachment. So I will need to get the others made at some point. I have 98% of the parts for the cockpit panel as well - now to get the measurements for the panel.

I was lucky enough to get into the cockpit of the Moorabbin Air Museum Beaufighter recently. And it reminded me of why I was told I could never be a pilot when I was at school. Being 6ft 6 is great for many things but not flying older aircraft, and my head was the lucky recipient of many souvenirs (ie dents) from banging my head as I made my way around the interior.

But being my first time inside a WW2 aircraft it was very cool, and provided a lot of invaluable info for me to work on

So as I say, stay tuned. Depending on how things go, it may be a month or four before this current thing is done, and then it will be reported here