Aviation in the Shoalhaven
"Nowra aerodrome has already been used by the R.A.A.F. in operations with the Navy and there seems no doubt that had Adastra [Airways] not gone to some trouble and expense to induce the local authorities to prepare an aerodrome at Nowra, the Commonwealth would have been obliged to prepare at its own expense an aerodrome in this locality for service purposes." - Acting Controller of Civil Aviation, 21 May 1935
The Shoalhaven and adjoining south coast regions have long played an important part in the country's aviation development. It was at Stanwell Tops just north of Wollongong that the aviation pioneer Lawrence Hargrave conducted his influential box kite experiments in the late nineteenth century, and it from nearby Seven Mile Beach that Charles Kingsford Smith departed in 1933 - in the Southern Cross - to establish the first commercial aerial link with New Zealand.
It was the fledgling airline industry that first recognised the Shoalhaven's aviation potential and caused the infrastructure developments that later served the military so well.
In May 1935, Adastra Airways Ltd inaugurated a same-day Sydney to Bega (NSW) return airmail service stopping enroute at Nowra. Adastra's Fox Moth and Waco biplanes maintained this twice-weekly subsidized service until about September 1940 when its aircraft were impressed by the military.
Britain, Australia and the United States conducted aerial operations from this site throughout the Second World War, and nearby at St Georges Basin and Jervis Bay. The Navy's Fleet Air Arm has been operating from this site since 1948 for more than half a century with many of the region's residents still having some association with this activity.
Fleet Air Arm personnel were taught aircraft ground handling techniques using obsolete Mk.V and Mk.VIII RAAF Spitfires, at least fifteen of which were transferred to the RAN's new Naval Air Station at HMAS Albatross after June 1948.
Aircraft Handlers were instructed on a narrow expanse of concrete known as the dummy deck which was dimensionally similar to the flight deck of Australia's first aircraft carrier HMAS Sydney (III) and, which now forms part of this museum's floor. Original line markings can still be distinguished in some parts of the museum - beneath the grey overcoat - together with static discharge points.
