The very old days
I took my 93 year old grandmother to the airways museum a few months back as her dad was the first ATC at Essendon back in the 30's.
She looked at the big aerial photo of EN on the wall taken in the late 30's and she commented, "yes, that's just how I remember it. I used to play just there [pointing to a shack where the tanks are now] when dad was at work."
She recounted how the Holyman airways pilots used to come over to her house to socialise with the family (who lived off the end of 17) and how devastated they were when the two aircraft were lost in Bass Strait in the mid 30's as they knew each other so well.
Many other stories as well. I'm trying to get it all on tape - particularly the bits about growing up on Thursday Island then Broome (where my great great grandfather was a radio operator) as a little white girl in the 1920's.