Those magnificent men in their flying machines

“People’s love for planes is highly emotional in many respects,” said president of the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society, Bob De La Hunty.

“Either it’s to do with travel, or history, or wartime experiences, the technology that’s involved and the charisma that’s perceived to surround aviation.”

Mr De La Hunty has been with the society for more than 35 years, with “engineering concepts” sparking his love affair with the big birds of the sky.

“[They] got me interested when I was a small boy, just seeing how birds flew and then how mankind has figured out how to make aircraft fly.”

HARS plays a big part in one of the Illawarra’s premier tourist drawcards - the Wings Over Illawarra air show held at Albion Park Rail.

What started out as an open day charging a mere $5 entry, it has turned into a huge boost to the local economy bringing in thousands of bird-lovers from the region, NSW and from around the country.

Prior to 2002, the 22 aircraft HARS owned were strewn between members’ backyards, storage facilities, sheds, Mascot and Bankstown airports.

When Shellharbour City Council encouraged the team to build their permanent home in the Illawarra with the help of BHP, it was the beginning of something special.

Their fleet of historic aircraft eventually flew south to Illawarra Regional Airport, attracting much interest from the fans of big, beautiful birds. There they stayed, living in three huge hangars and a museum building, the largest restored heritage aircraft types in Australia.

Former HARS vice-president John Brooker said their vision was to bring Australia closer to it’s history of aviation, just as their Super Constellation “Connie” had literally brought Australia a lot closer to the rest of the world.

The group began in 1979 and today has a motley crew of around 550 volunteers, ranging from stay-at-home mums, to highly skilled engineers, accountants, teachers, professors, doctors, retired or current airline pilots and ex-military pilots.

The society has 10 flying aircraft including a Tiger Moth, Caribou and Catalina; eight “static aircraft” including an ex-Qantas Boeing 747; and seven aircraft under restoration including a Southern Cross Replica and De Havilland Vampire.

These and more will be part of the star attractions at the 10th year Wings Over Illawarra has been organised, now across two glorious days on April 30 and March 1.

At ground level, visitors will be able to wander around exhibits of classic cars, bikes, farm machinery, classic speedway cars, military vehicles and vintage buses.

The vision to put the society’s birds on show was sparked in a retired businessmen after the 2002 independent AVIEX International General Aviation Exhibition and airshow failed to impress at Albion Park Rail.

“It started with an idea from [former BHP president of coated products] John Cleary who thought it’d be worthwhile to do at the airport, and Shellharbour Council adopted the idea and it’s grown from there,” said Mr De La Hunty.

The first HARS museum Open Day was held in 2007 with admission prices barely at the cost of a cup of coffee. It was a raging success with 17,000 people wandering around the airfield, birdwatching.

For seven years the operation was run by the council in conjunction with HARS and a community committee as a way of raising interest in regional airports, promoting tourism to the region and displaying the impressive work carried out by HARS.

Profits went back into the aviation museum and other community organisations and projects.

In 2009 the then chairman of the HARS museum, Michael Hough, predicted that within five years the open day would be one of the most significant aviation events in Australia.

At the end of 2013 Shellharbour Council moved to allow a private company owned by Mark and Kerry Bright to take over the organisation rights of the airshow.

The pair of aviation enthusiasts knew the regional airport well, having owned and operated the Aviator Lounge as well as long being members on the Wings committee.

Extreme weather dampened the first two years Bright Events organised the show, with gale force winds grounding most of the aerial displays in 2014 and flash flooding forcing the closure of the airfield in 2015.

The last 12 months have been a rocky road for the Bright’s who were trying to pick-up the pieces of the failed event and push on to ensure 2016 would be bigger and better than ever.

“As soon as the last one finished we got stuck into this one straight away.

Hopefully the weather is going to be on our side this time,” laughed Mark Bright.

“It has been 12 months in pulling it together, even though things were on hold a bit there with the tender process going through council, we just had to continue hoping everything would go our way.”

Late last year Shellharbour Council “threw a spanner in the works” when they decided to put the organisation of the show to tender, much to the shock of the Brights.

But Mark knew their passion for big birds would prevail, and they just had to keep up with their work in the hope it wasn’t all for nothing.

Bright Events recently announced they’ve happily signed a five year deal to produce Wings Over Illawarra, and are constantly “planning ahead” for this April, 2017 and beyond.

“It’s going to be a glorious autumn weekend this year,” said Mark.

Meantime wife Kerry admitted to praying to every god she’s ever heard of to ensure the sun shines through the clouds, onto those big, beautiful birds.