A report from David Palmer
Ashburton aerodrome in mid-Canterbury offers more than a southbound refuelling stop. It holds a treasure trove.
The Ashburton Aviation Museum is low profile but high value.
It’s too clichéd to talk about a “labour of love”, so let’s just say the enthusiasm that has spent 36 years developing this museum gives a “coming home” feel to the place for any aviation lover. In fact the oil-stained-overalls-clanging-tools atmosphere is a big part of its appeal.
However, the exhibits are pretty impressive too. For one thing there are 27 aircraft at last count, some pretty rare, which we’ll get to in a minute.
Let’s begin, though, with the walls and alcoves full of photos, models, medals and memorabilia: the usual museum material but in unusually large quantities and with some that are definitely different. For example a “space ball” that fell to earth from the Soviet satellite Cosmos 482 when it broke up over the South Island in 1972. Or an impressive diorama of RNZAF Station Ashburton circa 1942–44.
There is also — sensitive readers may wish to skip this paragraph — the very axe that smashed 96 still-in-the-boxes Merlin engines, not to mention several Mosquitos, which were purchased for scrap in 1957 by local engineer Cliff Horrell. One of the four perpetrators of this holocaust was Les Vincent, who later worked off his bad karma by becoming a pilot, Auster owner and president of the museum.
However, according to curator Jim Chivers, Les “does get hell” over his youthful barbarism. In his defence, though, Jim asks how many of us have ditched what we once termed “rubbish” that we’d now pay through the nose to reacquire?
The museum originated with a meeting in the Ashburton Library on 29 October 1974 to consider the possibility of forming an historic aviation society. It was initiated by 17-year-old aviation enthusiast Peter McQuarters, then a typographer for the Ashburton Guardian. Eight men joined him over tea and biscuits and decided to give it a go. The following month they gained their first charge: a Bofors AA gun donated by Burnett’s Motors.
It’s worth noting that almost all of the eight survivors of that meeting remain members of today’s Ashburton Aviation Museum Society (one, Ian Royds, died in February). The special atmosphere owes much to this continuity. Peter did need to withdraw for a couple of decades, however, to build a career. By general call Jim is the heart and soul of the museum.
But back then, getting it underway was like trying to push-start a 747. Years passed as the team sought to acquire land at Tinwald on which to build a facility but were stymied by bureaucrats. The growing number of members kept things moving, though, by recruiting wives, families and friends for fundraising.
Then the RNZAF put its Harvards up for tender. Inspired by the chance to have a really serious museum exhibit, the team put in a $2500 bid for one, and on 25 May 1978 was informed that, subject to payment within a month, it now owned North American Harvard Mk 2a, c/n 88-9269, RNZAF code NZ1012. Jubilation was tempered, however, by the fact that their trust had exactly $153.14 in the bank.
But the people of Ashburton rallied in support, and in 24 days they raised the money. The Harvard was towed to Ashburton along SH 1 and parked up in a farm shed.
The acquisition gave impetus to a hangar fundraising campaign. The Harvard made its contribution at various public events, while members made their contributions through running market stalls and raffles — one at the Tinwald Tavern ran every Saturday night for 12 years — cutting firewood, carting hay, donating the profits from paddocks of crops, selling Christmas hampers, helicopter rides and public sponsorship for each of the 2000 concrete blocks needed for the hangar, and hiring their Bofors to Walt Disney studios for a movie at Queenstown.
Ashburton isn’t a big place — the town has 17,000 people — and if the members were the instigators of all this, the community were its essential supporters.
In 1982 the team gave up on the bureaucrats and made the happy decision to locate the museum at Ashburton aerodrome. Construction of the hangar began in 1984. Most of the labour was voluntary, with many local firms offering services at discount rates. Burnett’s Motors made sure its old Bofors had a roof over its muzzle by donating the use of a crane to hoist the hangar’s steel trusses into place. In August 1990 the hangar was completed, and the museum had a place to display its growing collection of aircraft.
In fact the collection was already so big that when the adjacent building, a scenic flight operations base, came up for sale soon afterward the team cast covetous eyes on its plane-sized workshop and upstairs office space. The asking price seemed off their screen, but a new fundraising campaign was launched, grants money secured, and finally a mortgage committed to.
The building was acquired in 1994 and paid off in 2000. As well as the museum’s workshop facility for aircraft restorations, this hangar is now home to what must be one of the best aviation libraries in the country, with thousands of books donated or bequeathed by members.
Now for the aircraft. A rare Porterfield 35W high-wing two-seater dates from 1938. The type was designed in 1933 by pupils at Wyandotte High School in Kansas City as a class project. This survivor reached Ashburton in RNZAF colours and was formally donated by the Willmott family on the hangar’s opening day in 1990. The world’s only intact Yeoman Cropmaster is on long-term loan from Lindsay McNicol.
Philip Burns and his family contributed a de Havilland Vampire T11; a Percival Proctor; an EoN Olympia, which at over half a century is one of New Zealand’s oldest gliders; and a de Havilland Devon received by the RNZAF in 1954 and put into storage as an attritional reserve, having accumulated a total flight time of just 17½ hours.
An expert team of aircraft restorers has developed over the years, even though none of its members has an aviation mechanical background. But it does include engineers, electricians and back shed tinkerers and, as Jim pragmatically puts it, “planes are only mechanical things that fly”.
Purists may wince, but with a collection of old aircraft maintenance manuals and a can-do attitude, it’s amazing what you can achieve. Streamlined forms and gleaming paintwork pay tribute to hundreds of hours of painstaking work that have repaired years of neglect.
The Devon had spent a decade sitting in a North Canterbury paddock. A Bergfalke glider was saved from a rubbish fire on the West Coast. A de Havilland FB5 Vampire had done years of service as a deteriorating public spectacle and children’s jungle gym, and was sitting disconsolately outside the Cave Tavern when it became the subject of another group’s aborted restoration project.
It finally reached the museum compliments of Ashburton Transport which delivered the fuselage from Kaiapoi and the wings from Tai Tapu, free of charge. An English visitor to the museum was sure he’d flown the Vampire in Germany with 118 Squadron RAF before it went to the RNZAF in 1956.
The most recent job involved assembling and painting the museum’s newly acquired de Havilland Meteor F8. This example of the first jet warplane to see service outside the Luftwaffe served with the RAF before being taken on charge by the RAAF in August 1952. That was in Japan, where it became a reserve machine for RAAF units operating in the Korean War, being released to 77 Squadron in December 1954 just before the unit returned to Australia.
By the following May it was parked up at 78 Wing, unserviceable, then a year later was passed to 22 Squadron. An in-flight oil pressure failure in April 1957 resulted in its being relegated to an instructional airframe at RAAF Point Cook Fire School.
Condemned in November 1970, the Meteor was rescued from a dump and towed to its first civilian home at the Moorabin Air Museum near Melbourne. It was later purchased by Adelaide restorer Bob Jarrett, who searched worldwide to find cockpit fittings and a pair of Derwent engines for it, and it became the foundation airframe of the Classic Jets Fighter Museum in Adelaide. However, as the museum’s focus turned more piston-engined, the Meteor was first shunted outdoors to create space for new arrivals, then put up for tender. The Ashburton team has painted it in RAAF livery as a mark of respect for its history.
However, for the general public the star exhibit is probably the Hawker Harrier. Yes, that is the VTOL “jump-jet” Harrier. As with many of the exhibits, its presence is due to luck and enterprise.
Peter was a regular at Warbirds Over Wanaka as organiser of the Classic Fire Engines displays. Knowing the popularity of the annual CockpitFest held by the Newark Air Museum in the UK, he suggested to WOW’s then general manager Gavin Johnston that the show feature a similar display of cockpits. Gavin was enthusiastic, and there have now been three.
Peter thought it would be good for Ashburton to acquire a cockpit, both to contribute to Wanaka and give its own exhibits more “Wow factor”. He did some research and came across GJD Services, a UK specialist in parting-out redundant aircraft. With sponsorship from Ron Cameron of Cameron Air and Sea Freight, the museum acquired a Canberra B2 cockpit in late 2005.
Canberra WH134 was a Royal Aircraft Establishment example which made history when it was used in the first UK jet air-to-air refuelling trials, successfully topping up an English Electric Lightning. It was in pristine, near-concours condition when it was cut up. Peter regrets that he didn’t appear on the scene earlier so he could have had a shot at the whole aircraft.
As it is, he says, “Some on-line bloggers were most unimpressed this historically important cockpit had escaped the UK, but it’s well cared for at Ashburton, and besides, they can always visit!”
Then came the day, around Christmas 2005, when Peter contacted Gary Spoors at GJD to ask, “Have you got any other cockpits?”
“No, not at the moment,” Gary replied.
Oh, well, it had been worth a shot.
“But we do know of a complete Harrier available if you want it.”
Talk about Wow factor!
Gary told him it was a GR3 model currently up for Ministry of Defence disposal. “I’d happily act on your behalf, but if you want it you’d better be quick.”
But of course it was impossible. The Harrier was up for tender, Peter had just days over the Christmas and New Year period to jack up something, and who knew what millionaires, billionaires and corporations would be bidding colossal sums for the thing?
Still, he says, it seemed to be worth “having a go at”.
Some of the museum members formed the Harrier Acquisition Group and held a meeting at which everyone put up a grand. They then placed a bid for the grand figure of ₤5525. It was almost embarrassing. “We were incredibly naïve.”
Peter still doesn’t know how they won the tender. Their success owed a lot to the goodwill of Gary Spoors, who seemed to take a shine to the Kiwis — “we didn’t dick him around” — and perhaps liked the idea of being able to say he sold internationally.
Whatever his motives, he successfully brokered them the Harrier at cost, despite their humble bid, looked after the disassembly and packing and even paid the VAT. Certainly it remains the only Harrier in Australasia and continues to attract awed remarks along the lines of “how the hell did you get that?”
The Ashburton Harrier, RAF serial number XZ129, is a GR3 model that first flew in 1976. When made surplus by the MoD it was serving as an instructional airframe at a Royal Navy engineers’ school at Yeovilton.
Peter says he did get criticism relating to the Harrier’s perceived lack of relevance to New Zealand aviation history, but later scotched this with research. He learned that the CO of 1 Squadron RAF when it introduced the Harrier into operational service in 1970 was New Zealand-born pilot Kenneth (later Sir Kenneth) Hayr.
He has also come across a “surprising number” of Kiwi pilots who have flown Harriers. In fact, after examining his logbook, Sqn Ldr Sean Perrett, CO of the RNZAF Historic Aircraft Flight, announced that he had actually flown this very Harrier while serving with the RAF.
With a Harrier, Meteor, two Vampires and a Canberra cockpit, Ashburton is developing some presence as a collector of jet warplanes.
Currently the Ashburton Aviation Museum Society has around 400 members, of whom 150 are locals. The aerodrome is a convenient refuelling stop for GA and vintage aeroplanes bound for Wanaka, the museum hosts the Sport Aircraft Association’s biennial Great Plains Fly-in, and it gets an interesting international mix of visitors. The atmosphere of the place works its way deep into those who pop by, and it has members all around the world.
One result is that its profile isn’t as low as it used to be — literally. The museum now has a shiny new hangar looming over everything, with construction and fitting out being completed early this year. While the financial commitment involved would have been terrifying back in 1974, Jim says that it actually wasn’t such a mission as the first hangar, there being a lot more funding resources around these days, plus the museum did a deal with the Southern DC-3 Trust which needed a home after its eviction from Wigram.
The hangar was to have been opened on 25 February, but along with just about everything else between Ashburton and Rangiora this plan got knocked back by the earthquake, and it now sits empty awaiting a more auspicious debut.
At one stage it was intended for the DC-3 to share the hangar with Peter’s Fokker Friendship ZK-BXG, parked outside, impressive but engineless. However, accommodation pressure from the museum’s growing collection of aircraft means the F.27 is probably destined to live out its retirement outdoors.
“Not a very good situation at all,” Peter says, “but it’s a Catch-22 the architects of most attempts to preserve large airframes find themselves in.”
Peter has a couple of Dart “carcasses” that could be hung off it, and the Air New Zealand Engineering training school has donated two cowls. But the Friendship could really use a pair of props if anyone out there happens to have a set in their garage or cowshed.
Museums needn’t be cavernous halls littered with dusty junk. The Ashburton Aviation Museum is a lively, growing centre for collecting, restoring and preserving survivors of our remarkable aviation heritage.
The museum is open Wednesdays 10–4, Saturdays 9–4 and Sundays 1–3, or by appointment through Ron McFarlane 027 436 8930.
- Thanks to Murray Perkins for his help in putting together this article