Manbullo was built in the early forties as a maintenance base for B24 Liberator bombers, after VJ Day, Manbullo along with numerous other facilities throughout Northern Australia were vacated.
The runway became part of the access road between the Victoria Highway and Manbullo station, from memory the main product from Manbullo station was Rock melons.
The Katherine Skydiving Club aircraft RFO was in fact a 1958 C182A, due to it spending much of its early life operating out of Tennant Creek area it was relatively free of corrosion. Designed to run on 80-87 octane it required spark plug cleaning on a semi regular basis as the only Avgas available was 100-130.
There were numerous WW2 memorabilia discovered, partly buried including pistols,machine guns .50 cal,engines parts and a enormous quantity of live .50cal ammo dumped in a creek.
B52's from Guam would conduct low level navex's <500ft to the west of Tindal and the smoke from those engines was a sight to behold.
