Photos and details of how a few original members turned a flooded sugarcane field into a sport aviation mecca in South East Queensland. Also a special thank-you to Dave Donahue (one of the original club members) for providing these great photographs.
This first airfield is about 500 m away from our current location and importantly you can see quite clearly all of the different runways mowed into the grass. Back then the aircraft were not as sophisticated as they are now and a 5 knot crosswind was the absolute maximum upper limit for many of the aircraft designs which at the time were really basic ultralight aircraft like the Wheeler Scout. This is why there are so many runways going in different directions so you could always take off or land into the wind.
It is believed this photograph was taken in the late 80s or early 90s.
Our present airfield location is on the right-hand side of this photograph approximately 2/3 rds of the way up from the bottom of the photograph with many of the identifying features in this photograph still visible today including the cemetery, and the horse racing track in the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph. All of the original area where our first airfield was located has now been mined for sand and they are now large freshwater lakes.
Do you have any historic photographs of sport aviation flying on the Gold Coast ? if so please make contact here so we can include them on this page.