At this time, the main focus of this very amateur website is to archive the information that  is being collected as a basis for a small booklet that is being produced to record the heritage values of the Powerhouse Museum buildings which are scheduled for destruction.

Enter the PHM pages here.

Other archives on this site:

In July 1914, the French pilot  Maurice Guillaux flew from Sydney to Melbourne with Australia’s first air mail and air freight. A re-enactment took place in July 2014. www.australiasfirstairmail.com .

 One aim of the re-enactment is to gather the historical knowledge of this period.

Enter the Guillaux history pages here.

 This site also is a place to store stuff related mainly to my former voluntary role as archivist at the Australian Aviation Museum, Bankstown. This museum opened in 1985 and has preserved iconic items in a historic setting: the history of Bankstown airfield is little known, and entirely amazing (see this summary). However, the prevailing public ideology is that Sydney needs another shopping centre more than it needs an aviation museum. Poor fellow, my country!

This collection is huge (over 140 cubic metres) and contains many remarkable items. It is in the custody of the board of AAMB. I am happy to assist with communication to the board in regard to any matter relevant to the collection.

Digitising the material and making it available on the internet is a new skill for the people involved. If you have a slow internet connection you may find that some large items take too long to load. We are working on this problem and hope to improve things soon.

The best contact for this website is  tomlockley@gmail.com. Current contents are

Cataloguing etc from AAMB

Digitising part of the Wills collection

Data Sbeets for landing grounds, issued by DCA about 1940

Some articles related to Bankstown airfield

Historical notes for heritage assessment 2009 (text only)

Material concerning the 1934 England-Melbourne Air Race

Material concerning the 2012 National LIbrary of Australia grant to enable a significance assessment

 

And some useful links

If you have an interest in what this site is trying to achieve, and you might like to help, see this page