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Being solely a pensioner, it took me three years to save up for this trip to Australia. There were two sides to the trip. One was visiting relatives in Queensland and New South Wales, which has no place on my website, and what was to be the highlight of my trip, a visit to Williamtown Airport, the home of Fighterworld and the RAAF F-22 squadrons. I will add the photos of all the aircraft that I came in contact with.
Ready to board the Q300 from New Plymouth to Wellington. I'm on my way!
In Wellington I had a bit of a wait for my connection to the flight from Wellington to Brisbane. If I had tried to get the connection closer together I would have been in trouble with any sort of delays. I flew on the Airbus A321 both ways.
Arriving in Brisbane I exited to temperatures of 24 degrees when I had left Wellington I was dressed for 11 degrees. Not unsurprisingly I began sweating. I was not unhappy to be warm!
The next few days were taken up with visiting relatives and having a birthday. Then the visit to Williamtown. When we were arriving we were greeted with four F-22 Raptors playing tag, doing touch and goes and generally having fun, in a training sort of way. That was definitely the highlight of the trip. The sound of those F22's on afterburner blew my hearing aids out. Unfortunately my skills with my camera phone were miserable and none of the photos came out the way I wanted. The photos on here are from the Fighterworld website.
The F-18 Hornets are also based at Williamtown but none were in the air during the three hours we were there.
After the joys of watching the F-22's we headed into the hangar containing Fighterworld. There was a second hangar at the back right off the main hangar.
As we visited in the middle of winter, all of the items on display, were crushed into the two hangars. During summer quite a few of the display items are placed outside.
This made getting clear photos of the aircraft on display rather difficult. It did not reduce the joy of being up close and personal with some of my favourite aircraft.
The first aircraft you run into after passing through the entry is the F-111. This was a major bomber for the RAAF. During the 1970's and 1980's the major
country that Australia felt it would go to war with was Indonesia. The F-111 was to give the RAAF the ability to take a nuclear bomb to Indonesia and return.
The F-111, when you are walking around it, feels huge when placed against the other exhibits in the hangar.
Part of the exhibits is a number of display cases with hundreds and hundreds of miniature models of aircraft. The display was gifted to Fighterworld, after the maker
died, by his heirs. They are made out of wood, metal, plastic, and are beautifully assembled. My brother, in left photo, perusing through the large number of kitsets and
diecast models for sale. He eventually purchased one of the Fighterworld tee shirts, I bought a hat.
Next to my hat is the English Electric Canberra bomber. The first aircraft to give the RAAF a nuclear capability.
The next pair of photos show an Me-109, which was not in either hangar of exhibits, and the normal position of the Gloster Meteor at the front gate.
The Gloster Meteor was the first jet fighter for the RAAF. Examples of this flew in Korea.
Two of the important early jets for Australia were the Vampire for the Navy and the F-86 Sabre for the RAAF.
The last two exhibits in the first hangar were poles apart. A Dassault Mirage fighter and a Sopwith Camel.
On to hangar Two. Hangar Two was smaller than Hangar One and had fewer exhibits. But this was where we found the Spitfires.
The last couple of exhibits were of trainers that were shoved together and very tight for getting photos. So I took some shots off their website to show them.
The Bloodhound AA missile was a part of the Australian air defense systems. The Bloodhound normally sits at the front gate. The Hawker Sea Fury served
on the Australian Aircraft Carriers and was part of a local air show from earlier this year.
There were various other aircraft that I could find on their website but were not on display, the Hawker Hunter shows next to the trainer, two pics above, but must have been
in another storage area not open to the public. To really see the full collection, I think would require a visit in summer conditions. I would have liked to see a De Havilland Mosquito
or Hornet.
Finally was the return to New Zealand. I flew out of Brisbane, bound for Wellington. I arrived in Wellington with another 3 hour layover between planes. My last flight finally departed
Wellington at 7.30pm arriving back in New Plymouth at 8.20pm. A long day. What made it worse, I left Brisbane in 25 degree temperatures and arrived in Wellington where the current temperature was 5 degrees with a 50k wind. The feels like temperature being -2. That was 3.10pm. By the time we took off, the temperature was even lower. We had to walk 50 meters to the aircraft, we froze, it was very bitter. Below might be the aircraft we flew in but it is off the Air NZ website and does not display the conditions at Wellington at take off time.
After arriving at New Plymouth we were walking to the terminal and I was talking to two other passengers. One of them says "What a shithole place Wellington is" we agreed.
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