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

The end of the shed - but theres more and more being found !

I have honestly been up to my ears with sorting a massive amount out since the last post.

The main thing was that we finished clearing the shed :-(

After months of good solid slogging away, some 16 tonnes was sent off to be recycled, and the rest was sold or added to a rapidly growing collection. House has been emptied and settlement taken place, so theres no returning anymore.

Heres the final photos from the shed - Grandad, its been an honour to do this, and I hope you are proud of what we have achieved here

This is how I will always remember the shed, even from my childhood - that door !  In fact I reckon a few of you out there would recognise it too !

Just inside the door -

To think that was a huge mound of stuff chucked in there originally

Once full to bursting, now, no more

 Those boxes up in the corner we simply could not move, too heavy and required a forklift or something similar so we had to leave them. When the place is pulled down they can sort it out then !

 One lot of skip bins on the very last day - we had two lots in two days

 Useful member of the public decides to park almost in front of the shed door (the black car, white one is the scrappy's van)  Somehow we managed to not damage the car at all (came close a couple of times)

So then is that the end ?  OF COURSE NOT !!!!!!!!!

As I have mentioned before I have been working on another property recently, and in the last few weeks have started on a country property as well !  Yes, there is more stuff to be found, but as the pic below shows, where the hell am I going to put it ?  This is my shed on Xmas morning - no, Santa is not stuck in there, nor did he leave any presents, but somehow I am going to get that all sorted out soon.

I'm happy to report the inertia switch breeding program is going well, there is a very large family of them residing in my shed, heres a little group of them....

What you can see in the pic includes  - big wheel (Beaufighter), F86 Sabre Tyres, Vampire Tyres, RAAF / CAC Ceres Wing Flap/Centre Spar Ribs, Boxes contain Beaufighter cutoff throttles, torpedo and bomb cables, phone exchange wiring, aircraft rivets and a couple of hundred gauges.**NB CLICK ON THE PIC FOR FULL IMAGE***

The Beaufighter wheel is one of a pair, and you can see that I am doing some work on it, cleaning it with a toothbrush (literally) and silicon to soften it up as there is a flat spot that I need to ironed out when I inflate the tube eventually. As there is no room for the other wheel, it lives in my car at the moment !

I have been also travelling out and about and occasionally find some stuff destined for the scrapyards. One such trip recently netted a big box of stuff that I wasn;t paying too much attention to, other than it had an original CAC Boomerang ammo chute from the Tocumwal scrapyards and also three of these panels 

These didn't look like anything at first until I saw the second one which helpfully had "NEPTUNE" written in texta on the front !  That washed off easily enough, and I was excited to find the aircraft number on the underside as well... so yes its from a Lockheed Neptune

In the box was a load of parts for engines etc, which all turned out to be from a Cheetah engine - heres a bit below :

This monster is an Avro Anson Carb unit - from the box !

This part I got the week before, and was excited as it had the valve assembly on the rear still attached

But this was the big suprise in the box - an original KiGass Primer dated 1942. Never saw this at the time, and in fact didn't find it for a couple of days !

 So there we are for now, plenty more to come, including a small cache of Sabre parts, radio parts, and my attempts to restore an ejector seat that I found in a chook shed on the edge of the desert !

Have a great New Year, and keep reading !

Where Have I Been ?

Dear readers - you may very well be asking that question. And I apologize, time has run away from me !

Among other things I have been working on a building project for my son's kinder which is such a massive red tape affair that I think I've aged 15 years in the last five days ....

Oh yes, and I have had to catch up on the washing - I am a house dad after all !!!

But also, I have simply been flat out on a number of clearances. The shed and house are settled in three weeks. The end is upon us, yet I am still finding little bits in the dust on the floor - crazy !

Here's a selection of the best stuff over the last six weeks...


I often wonder why I did this for a career change ! - Now you see it......

And now you don't !   Around seven tonnes out of this aisle !

In among the stuff we found these things - the two on the right are quite dangerous things, used on aircraft years ago, but contains barium chromide - nasty nasty stuff...

I am stumped by this as I really don;t know the application other than it was used as per instructions for gapping aircraft sparkplugs...

There is still demand for tins of this type and in this condition. I would think that most are pretty ruined these days, and that this is older...not bad given its been in the garden for years!

This is pretty nice. Its a jet engine cover, certainly post WW2 with both RAAF and CAC badges on it. 

No its not a self portrait (I'm much prettier than that) but a shot of a pile of aircraft batteries sitting in the sunshine. The ones at the top (smaller ones) are Exide Batteries used in RAAF Wirraway aircraft, the big ones are unknown (I'm guessing Liberator or other such bigger craft) There is a badge on the side that says

AN Part 3150 (So its US - which it also has stamped on a different part of the body)

24V 34 A.H at 5 HOUR RATE

WT FILLED 76 LBS

SPEC GRAVITY FULL CHARGE 1.285

THE ELECTrIC STORAGE BATTERY CO

Anyone able to ID these?

Initially I thought these were just hand fire extinguishers but then found a metal tag on them and in fact they are Country Fire Authority. Only a couple in boxes and age has not been kind to them but no matter, still a nice piece of history from the late 1950's.

When I first picked this up I thought it was something from a toilet system ! It had the floater part attached to the rear. When I turned it over I still didn't think much until I saw the 01- part number. Its a floor gauge for fuel from a Wirraway !  Glad I hung onto it !!!

Yes its a wrapped package - and I have many in different sizes!  Most contain Fuzing shutter springs - they are tiny and generally there are between 10,000 and 70,000 (yes thats right) in each pack - and no I'm not counting them !~ Some are addressed to military, others to RAAF and ones like these to the Navy.

This was a bit of a find. In amongst a whole load of fencing wire and old phone line wire (complete with ceramics) was this box. I spotted a DAP tag so got into it further and discovered this is a box full of Bristol Beaufort 200Lb Bomb Cables !  

Here's a prop governor made by Hamilton. Unknown as to what aircraft this was from....

These next couple of things take up far too much space. They are ENORMOUS !  This one took a while to ID but very sure its an Avro Anson undercarriage wheel (main)

For quite a while I had been told that these were Mosquito Wheels. At some point they have had an axle added to them - easy enough to remove but they are not Mosquito. In fact after a bit of chasing around and some great assistance by a customer, they have been identified as Beaufighter Wheels. Incredible to be able to find a pair still together and in pretty good shape after all this time....but boy are they big !

OK I know this is a sodium valve, and thats about it. I have plenty of them but no idea what engine they are off....anyone recognise this and what engine it could be from?

I can't put into words what I;m thinking just looking at this picture. In fact I'm getting a headache from it !

So on that note I must jump back into the sheds and get discovering !  More stuff to follow as there is a lot of things being found - its just finding the time to post it up here....!