Our friends in Western Australia are recently back from their February early morning run, and you can catch up on all the action with this report thanks to Vicky Rowe and photo gallery thanks to Steve and Bee Grobler.

Numbers on our Perth EMRs always swell a little when we plan to end up somewhere interesting, so we had a couple extra join our run to the Aviation Heritage Museum on February 18!

A total of eight Loti plus Wayne’s TTS. There was Terry’s beautiful Europa, five Elise of varying vintage and two Espirit, including Andrew’s stunning v8 BRG Espirit. It was sheer music to have a burbly v8 in amongst the varying tunes of the smaller engines.

The drive needed to be curtailed a little to allow for time at the museum, although our morning tea stop took up much more time than was allowed for. There were 13 of us altogether, so not a big number, but apparently too much for this particular café to cope with all at once. Shortly upon arriving at the cafe a parade of Austin 7s pulled up which really helped overcome the long wait for our caffeine fix.

Any frustration at the café stop was soon forgotten once we arrived at the museum. This is a well stocked and very interesting collection, much of which is relevant to the World War II era. Enthusiastic volunteers (ex-RAAF) were on hand to add to the experience and many stories were told as we meandered through two large sheds (purpose built hangers you could say) to see the 30 aircraft on display, including; a Avro Lancaster MKVII bomber, Tiger Moth, Douglas C-47 Dakota, Vampire, Spitfire, PBY-5A Catalina, Percival Proctor (Les’ favourite), plus thousands of artefacts.

While these places are best appreciated in person the plane spotters across the country may feel somewhat satisfied by looking at the raafawa.org.au/museum website which provides an impressive array of information, including a virtual tour of the museum, a simulated tour of the Lancaster, as well as a number of video tours.

Vicky Rowe

Photography by Steve and Bee Grobler