In the North Hangar some of you might have noticed a cream and red Mk IV Kookaburra, VH-GNZ. The Geelong Gliding Club once owned this glider.
When I joined the club in 1966 GNZ was all white with competition number “45” on the side in red. All launching was by winch and average flight time was about 6 minutes in “Old 45” or about the same as an aerotow is now. Winch launches were 50c each and as near as I can recall old “45” cost 5 cents a minute.
The rest of he fleet comprised of a “Kingfisher” which looked a bit like a single seat Kookaburra and an “Arrow” (very hot) and a Boomerang (even hotter) on order from Schneider’s
I remember the day I went solo in old 45, half way up the launch it rained! As is still the practice some shouting at the bar was required after the gliders were put away. The “bar” consisted of two planks of wood supported at each end by 44-gallon drums. The North hangar existed having been built by members of the three clubs a few years earlier. There was no clubhouse, overnighters slept on the floor of the North Hangar in sleeping bags or in a trailer (warmer). One Easter we could not get above 800’ due to fog so the “Glide Inn” was built. This was thought then to be a really upmarket bar facility. Beaufort Gliding Club utilised it for its original purpose recently for their birthday party. You can see from this little bit of Nostalgia that there has been continuous growth since 1966 and when I think back on it, it is quite phenomenal. Here we are today with eight gliders two tugs, a share in our own land on which there is a shared clubhouse and hangar.
I remember a time when there was a very concerted effort to get gliding off Bacchus Marsh aerodrome, which was then owned and operated by the then Department of Civil Aviation, or as we called it “Department of Constant Aggravation”. Indeed when the Director Sir Donald Anderson (a Waikerie boy) opened our clubhouse I recall his speech where he remarked that he did not know if we could be around for much longer. Times change. The airfield passed into Council hands with us playing an active part in managing it and aggro from the department has gone away from Bacchus Marsh but is still a problem on a National scale.
Some say they were the “Good old Days”. As much as I enjoyed it I don’t really want it back, (“eat a lump of coal for breakfast” and all that). What we have now is a much better deal. The modern glider has the ability to go around bits of bad weather and aerotow took away a lot of the intense activity involved in large scale winching (but it did give the members something to do all day). On a busy day we had eight cables out on the field, four of ours and four of VMFG’s. Beaufort later brought on a single drum winch but I never saw it working when VMFG had both their winches out which would have meant nine cables. I don’t think there would have been room on the field for five winches!
The challenge for the future will be how to replace our ageing fleet. We have not bought new since the Junior in single seaters and the Puchacz in two seaters. LS4, DG300 K13 and Janus were all “pre-owned” Almost all clubs have the same dilemma so apart from one or two gliders ex top competition pilots; everything coming on the second-hand market for the foreseeable future will be old and well worn. The problem is that modern gliders although more durable are much more expensive. The days of really large expansion of gliding in Australia were when we had a very favourable fixed exchange rate (5 dm to the dollar down to 1.1 just before the Euro arrived).
Have a look at Old 45, Ian Patching says it will be ready to fly soon. Ask yourself if you really would like to occupy the rear seat for more than one circuit and think about the instructors who did hours and hours of it.