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Sunday May 6th saw the annual air show known as Wings Over Illawarra, this year held at Albion Park airport, also home to the HIstoric Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS). HARS rescues and restores historic aircraft from around th world and has some marvellous examples, including a flying Super Constellation, Lockheed Neptune, Catalina, C47 and more. See http://hars.org.au/ for more information about HARS. Further aircraft for the event were provided by the Temora Aviation Musem ( http://www.aviationmuseum.com.au/ ), including a flying Mustang, Spitfire, Hudson, Vampire, and the world's last flying Gloster Meteor. Spectacular indeed. Read more about the event at http://woi.org.au/ .
Until recently, the event was held at HMAS Albatross, Nowra, about an hour South of the current location, and the helicopters on display are based there. HMAS Albatross itself has an excellent aviation museum, open to the public all year round. Their collection includes many rare and restored aircraft ( http://www.navy.gov.au/Fleet_Air_Arm_Museum_Virtual_Tour ).
In addition to the flying displays and static display aircraft, the event also hosts a classic car show, which is open to any car club following successful application to the organisers. This year I decided to enter my Scimitar Ti1800. My application was duly accepted back in March and I made the 1 hr journey to the rendezvous point near the airport early in the morning. It was a glorious sunny day with clear blue sky, perfect for both the air display and for the classic cars. Once inside the airfield and parked, there were the best part of 500 cars of many marques and eras, but overwhelmingly of a British flavour. This year the 'featured' marque was the MG 'T' series, and there were quite a few of them present. Being the only example of Reliant, I had to slot in wherever I could, and unfortunately the next car alongside was a towering (Buick, I think) Century, a giant of a car, which quite literally overshadowed the diminutive Scimitar. Other than that, all was set for a great day.
The Scimitar did provoke quite a few questions and long looks. I was initially worried that it might not have been "classic" enough for the show, but in the event it was by no means the newest of vehicles and was probably one of the rarest, certainly in Australia, although that Jensen 541 must be the rarest of all here!
This air show amazes me each time I attend, and I have been doing so for several years now. Considering the area in which I live is such a quiet backwater, it is incredible there are so many rare aircraft and vehicles, right on my doorstep. And when I say 'on my doorstep', I really mean it - the grandson of Donald Healey lives a few houses down from me , on the same street, with a couple of old frogeyes outside under tarpaulins. Just a couple minutes after setting off in the morning, I was behind a couple of WWII Jeeps making their way to the show. All along the route, the convoy just grew, with enthusiast's vehicles crawling out of the woodwork from every direction.
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