Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Aucklander

Demobbed

The Aucklander
9 mins to read
‌

Joanna Davies hears The Last Post at Auckland's oldest Air Force base
Listen. Just stand and listen. You can hear it, faintly at first, carried on the wind across the Upper Harbour.
The thrumming. The thrumming of the propellers carrying a Sunderland flying-boat home from the Pacific. Then louder, more agitated, more Marching feet: more than half a century ago, thousands of men and women passed through these gates to serve in World War II.
They trained here, lived here: single men in the barracks; married men allocated base houses.
They played, too - athletics, cricket, sailing and rugby - and watched Merle Oberon, Lawrence Olivier and David Niven in Wuthering Heights, Oscar-winner in the year war broke out, at the Station Institute theatre.
This was a time when airmen had to ask permission to marry and women were not allowed in the bars.
By the water, men built planes to be sent up to the Pacific: shipped in crates to Auckland, ferried on the Waitemata, assembled at Hobsonville. The women of Air Force Relations knitted scarves and balaclavas - Air Force blue, of course - for the airmen. Other women of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force repaired instruments and sewed parachutes.
There is little sound here today. Just the Air Force band practising in a hall.
The Last Post for Hobsonville airbase.
The rows of phoenix palms lining Buckley Ave are all that remain of the entrance to Hobsonville airbase.
The commemorative gates with their concrete eagles are gone. The security box and barrier are still there, but the arm is always raised. Gone, too, are most of the Air Force personnel.
You can't drive between the palms any more; you have to drive through a muddy detour while the road is replaced.
The street names are reminders of the base's past: Isitt, Calder, Buckley and Carnegie were former commanding officers.
In a few months the first houses will be built in Auckland's newest suburb on top of the region's oldest airbase. The builders - now upgrading old civic amenities - will start on Buckley Ave.
Apart from the builders, Hobsonville is a ghost town. Many of the old staff houses are empty, and the kohanga reo, though it's still in use, is quiet.
The base has been winding down since 2002. A few houses are still occupied, but eventually the residents will be moved out to Whenuapai or south to Ohakea, near Palmerston North. So will the last of the carpenters and mechanics who work near the old flying-boat hangars.
They will be replaced by civilians wanting to live just a 25-minute ferry ride from Downtown Auckland. Superyacht builders will take over the old hangars by the water.
Hobsonville Point, a 167ha development owned by Hobsonville Land Company, a Housing NZ subsidiary, is one of the few large parcels of vacant land left in Auckland.
Three thousand houses will be built, the first 660 in August. A primary school will open in 2013, followed by a high school a year later.
Public transport to the new suburb will start later this year, before the residents move in, and a ferry terminal is proposed.
Hobsonville Land Company chief executive Sean Bignell says the development is full of potential. From his office in the old non-commissioned officers' mess hall, Mr Bignell is in charge of making the project happen.
"We're not starting from a blank canvas here," he says. "We've got the phoenix palms that we've retained and Mill House, which was constructed in 1929. It's a really wonderful Arts and Crafts-style home. At the moment it's still occupied by Air Force personnel and the end use hasn't been determined, but it is important to retain it," he says.
Several grand officers' houses will be sold off, and the seaplane hangars could become cafes. "We want to retain some character that you don't often get with new developments."
But many of the old houses will be removed, as well as some older buildings that are no longer needed.
"Many of them are past their useful life. All the infrastructure here was built in the 1920s, and it all needs to be replaced," Mr Bignell says.
AT its busiest, the Hobsonville base was work, home, and playground for around 1500 servicemen. By the time it closed in 2002, it was the home for the force's helicopter fleet.
Ian Ronalds, a former squadron leader of the base's technical training school, served there from 1984-92. He speaks in military acronyms as he walks around the old site.
"That used to be the technical training school," he says, pointing to a hangar with a large yacht being built outside. "What does me good is to see creations like that coming out of it."
The old barracks are empty. Paint is chipped, windows cracked.
"Here there used to be a big water tower. During the war, one of the lads snuck his girlfriend up onto the water tower to get a bit of privacy, and his jealous mates decided to cut the ladder off it.
"Even when I came here in the 80s, there was still a tower with the ladder cut off - I don't know how they got down," he chuckles.
Mr Ronalds has many stories of young men on the base during the war, passed down by old comrades.
"One chap decided that hiding in the back of a plane in a hangar with his girlfriend was a good idea. He didn't know that the officers used the hangar in the evenings to play badminton, so they had to keep very quiet for a few hours so they could sneak out again."
As chairman of the Hobsonville Old Boys Association, Mr Ronalds wants to see a memorial for those who served there.
"For us, many of the things that are significant are already gone. The old chapel, where my daughter was married, is gone. [Over Air Force veterans' protests, St Marks was moved to the Papakura Army base in 2005.] The old gate and the eagle are gone."
For the old boys, the next best place to have a memorial would be outside the old headquarters building, around the rusting flagpole.
"Everyone would parade outside this flagpole every day. A new recruit would come here to sign in. This base was founded by the airmen - nothing would have happened without them - and we think that this would be the most appropriate place for it."
A design, estimated to cost around $20,000, has been submitted to the Defence Force.
"It's purely a concept to get things moving," says Mr Ronalds. "Now we will establish some sort of trust to complete fundraising, but there are always fishhooks about who is going to own it and who is going to maintain it."
Down on the wharf the Air Force still uses the old seaplane hangars for metal workshops.
"There would be thousands of dollars of tools in the mud around here," says Mr Ronalds. "The airmen would work on the flying-boats when they were in the water, and I'm sure many tool boxes fell off them."
Wwater is why Hobsonville is here: in the days before helicopters and jets, the Upper Harbour site made it the preferred place to house New Zealand's flying-boat fleet.
Malcolm Harvey-Williams, a former mechanical engineer, remembers working on the Sunderland planes as they were moored in the water.
"If it was your first time working on the plane, you'd walk along the plane to do some work on the front propeller. All the other boys would walk along the rest of it to make it rock in the water. If you got back from that without falling off, you'd be left alone. I made it."
After working at the base on and off between 1958 and the early 1970s, he hopes its
history won't be forgotten.
"It was one of the nicest bases I've ever worked at.
"It had a nice layout and everyone got on well.
"It is the second oldest base in the country after Wigram in Christchurch, and that should be remembered."
Bee Dawson, who has written numerous books of Air Force social history, says the base is significant to the Auckland region.
"When it was first established it was very remote from Auckland, and they had to develop a self-contained community. During the war years I think Aucklanders were pleased to have a base close by.
"It was unlike any other base I've ever been to, with the geography and the sea planes all around it. It was a very charming place."
Mrs Dawson, who has published a book about the base's history, says a memorial is a wonderful idea: "Wherever you have to develop, people need to get a sense of the past and what was there before."
Hobsonville Pt
1925 Land bought to establish an airfield at Hobsonville
1928 NZ Permanent Air Force moves onto the base under command of Major L.M. Isitt
1930s Flying field and seaplane slipway completed. The base becomes home to the Auckland Territorial Air Force Squadron
1939-45 During World War II the base is home to the technical training school and a flying instructors' school. From 1943 a Torpedo Bomber Operational Training Unit, Seaplane Training Flight and Marine Section are based there
1945 At the end of the war, part of Five Squadron moves in to cover air and sea rescue with Catalina and Sunderland seaplanes
1952 The base is the first to have its badge officially recognised by the Queen
1965 RNZAF Base Hobsonville and RNZAF Base Whenuapai merge as RNZAF Base Auckland. Three Squadron moves to Hobsonville and it becomes a base for helicopters
1966-1967 Five Squadron moves to Whenuapai as it decommissions the Sunderland seaplanes and starts operating Orions
2002 The Government decommissions Hobsonville. Remaining operations are moved to Ohakea and Whenuapai.
Home base

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Save