Originally Posted by
Milt
Richmond Aerodrome Beginnings
Flying from Richmond commenced about a few months earlier than October 1916. From the memoirs of one Delfosse Badgery -
When war broke out, Guillaux had been immediately recalled to France. He had taken with him his Bleriot monoplane, but had sold his Caudron biplane to a young Frenchman, J.C. Marduel, who conducted a school of languages in Castlereagh Street, Sydney.
It is difficult to imagine anyone more adventurous than Marduel, for, having bought an aeroplane, he decided to teach himself to fly it. The team of mechanics with Guillaux had assembled the aircraft, which had been flown by Guillaux in test flights. It was stored in a shed near Centennial Park, and Marduel bravely began his self-taught flying experiments in that park. Attempting to rise from the ground, he crashed into the branches of a Moreton Bay fig tree. The aircraft was damaged, but the aviator was unhurt. It was at that rather late stage that Del’s advice and help were sought. If Marduel had joined forces with Del at the beginning, they could have established a profitable flying school, as the larger Caudron owned by Marduel was a two seater and he was agreeable to using his machine for that purpose.
Del realized that, if he could repair the damaged machine, Centennial Park was totally unsuitable as a flying-field. Its sand-dunes, scrubs, swamps and lakes provided no large level space of cleared ground, and its situation on ridges between the Harbour and the Ocean was one which suffered from fitful sea-breezes and turbulent air-currents, such as that which had contributed to Marduel's mishap.
Flavelle's paddock at Concord was too small, and too much encumbered with stumps and trees, for use as a flying-school field. It therefore became necessary for Del to find a site for an aerodrome large enough, level and clear enough to be used with very little effort of preparation, yet within a short traveling distance of the city, but not in a densely inhabited suburb.
If such a place could be found, and a hangar and workshop built there, and if Marduel's Caudron could be borrowed, leased or acquired and economically repaired, then Del's dream of a Sydney Flying School could materialize.
As the Australian Federal Government, through its Department of Defence, was taking an extremely limited view of the use of aeroplanes in wartime, and was proceeding in a leisurely pace with the instruction of only four military officers at the Central Flying School at Point Cook, Del and his cousins asked the New South Wales Government for assistance in providing an aerodrome in order to establish a Civilian Flying School, from which, military aviators could also be trained.
The State Government, under the ministry led by Premier W.A. Holman, took a favorable view of that proposal. The arrangements for selecting and developing a site for a Government Aerodrome, under the supervision of the Minister for Public Works, Arthur Griffith, were entrusted to A.G. Cutler, Chief Engineer of the Public Works Department.
In April 1915. Del accompanied Cutler on visits to various areas of Crown Land on the outskirts of Sydney, but Del considered that none of the suggested sites was suitable as an aerodrome. The Government had insisted that the site for the aerodrome should be outside the metropolitan residential area.
"I know the ideal place," said Del.
"Where?" Cutler asked him.
"Richmond Common:" said Del.
Several times he had made flights to that vicinity thirty miles to the northwest of Sydney, and had landed on the large, level, treeless common of the town of Richmond, on the Hawkesbury River. Del knew that this area was close to the original farm of his grandfather, Samuel Badgery. Hence Badgerys Creek.
“The Common belongs to the townspeople," said Cutler. "It is administered by trustees, but I suppose that they would give permission for an aerodrome there. It can never be sold to private owners, or used for cultivation or residential sites, and it is not used much for its original intention as a pasture for the townspeoples' cows. Most of them don't keep cows nowadays, as milk is supplied by dairy farmers who keep their cows in their own paddocks."
"It's not Crown Land, then?" asked Del.
"No, it's a Town Common, under an old Act of Parliament based on English law and practice. If you want to have your aerodrome, flying-school, hangars, and workshops there, the State Government has no power to make the land immediately available, as it could if it was Crown Land. You will have to obtain permission from the Trustees of the Common. Are you sure that this is the best site?"
"Easily the best.'" said Del, enthusiastically. After 125 years of settlement, the only Crown Land left unoccupied within thirty miles of Sydney was on hilly, stony, sandy, or scrubby soil - unsuitable for farm-cultivation or pastures, and for that reason also the unoccupied Crown Lands were unsuitable for aerodrome sites. It was a stroke of luck that the Richmond Town Common, a large level space that had been cleared of its trees by the pioneer settlers of the town, in quest of firewood, had been so heavily grazed by town cows and horses that it had a turf-like covering of grass that would make an ideal runway for aeroplanes taking off or landing.
The trustees of the Common gave permission for its use as an aerodrome, and for the erection of a hangar at the edge of the ground. In the meantime the State Government entered into negotiations to acquire the Common, this involved complicated legal procedures.
In April, 1915, Del Badgery and J. C. Marduel erected a shed on Richmond Common. Marduel’s damaged Caudron biplane was housed there, while Del worked at repairing it, and eventually he took it up for test flights.
That was the beginning of the Richmond Aerodrome - today one of the main bases of the Royal Australian Air Force. It was Delfosse Badgery who selected the site, and first flew an aeroplane there.
At that time (April 1915) the war in Europe was beginning to spread much more widely than had been expected. The Ottoman Empire (Turkey) had entered the war on the side of the Central European Powers (Germany, Austria and Hungary). This closed the Dardanelles Strait to the transit of war-materials by sea to Russia. Large British, French, Indian, Australian, and New Zealand forces were encamped in Egypt, in training for a military attack on Turkey, which would include an attempt to force the Dardanelles Strait by a military landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula.
Although 20,000 Australian troops had been sent to Egypt, leaving Australia in November 1914, there was no Australian Military Aviation unit in that expeditionary force.