"IT's very hard when approaching over the salt pans" said my friend Brian, as he recalled his flying days at Cunderdin while mastering the Tiger Moth, the RAAF's basic trainer.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
or signup to continue reading
Like many World War II pilots, Brian learned to fly at the RAAF facility at Cunderdin, as a part of the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS) set up to help Britain meet its needs during the early war time expansion.
It was created in 1939 to help train the aircrew needed in the United Kingdom, with Britain agreeing to train more than 40 per cent of the requirement, and Canada supplying 56pc of the balance, Australia 36pc and New Zealand 8pc.
Apart from the sheer size of the task, originally set at 28,000 pilots per year, Britain wasn't a great place to train pilots for it was on the front line and all airfields were likely to be disrupted, either by enemy aircraft or lousy weather.
Far more cost-effective to ship them overseas, originally to Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, although other parts of the Commonwealth were enlisted to help, with many also going to the United States.
The De Havilland Tiger Moth was the basic trainer, an open cockpit biplane, which Brian assured me could sink while gliding in to land at about the same rate as the heat thermals from the salt pans were lifting it.
Tom, another trainee, who wrote a book about his experiences, was the son of a man who once owned the farm we had at Kulin.
His Cunderdin experiences included loading up the Tigers with large paddy melons and bombing various targets of choice, or occasionally dropping empty beer bottles that whistled like a real bomb on the way down.
Brian ended up flying the RAAF's Curtiss Kittyhawk fighters in the Pacific, while Tom went to Europe where he flew the Halifax and Liberator bombers.
I remember talking to a local farmer who described how, when his group of trainees first lined up at Cunderdin, they were all asked whether they had any flying experience.
One declared that he had already flown 200 hours in a Tiger Moth, a report that was greeted with great enthusiasm by the addressing officer.
My friend, who had never flown before, ended up flying bombers in many parts of the world, while the 200-hour pilot spent the next three years instructing on Tiger Moths at Cunderdin.
Cunderdin is in the news again, with reports that it could be upgraded to become an alternative airport to Perth, even though they are about 160 kilometres apart.
However, as the current alternative airports for Perth are Learmonth, Adelaide or even Melbourne and Sydney, Cunderdin could be considered as being just down the road.
Cunderdin airport has previously hosted large aircraft, for the RAAF's No 25 City of Perth Squadron was based there in 1945 with its four-engined B-24 Liberator bombers.
Apart from its wartime history, Cunderdin airport was for many years the home of a crop spraying business and, apart from being the site of the Cunderdin campus of the WA School of Agriculture, it hosts the WA Gliding Club.
The concept makes a lot of sense, for Cunderdin is generally clear when Perth is fogged in, but it is also on the standard gauge rail-line which provides other alternatives.
Unfortunately, the possibility of Cunderdin becoming an alternate for Perth Airport has been announced during an election campaign, almost always considered the kiss of death, even for sensible, worthy options like this.
