I think you will find that the exodus started around 1992 or so. That was when the FAC came along and jacked up the rents and costs and started to take in non aviation industries to pay for their custom number plates and fancy corporate logos. We had a small but profitable little maint. biz there but when the costs went up our customers started moving away and we could not afford the FAC rents and with the CAA/ CASA attitude it was just not worth it. Closed up and went sailing in the Whitsundays for ten years. I think that this was part of the CAA's plan to get rid of as many small operators as they could so they had only a smaller industry base to stand over. The big got bigger and the small just faded away.
BTW Dick who screwed up the original ANO95:10 for ultralights and made it compulsory to belong to those pecker heads at RAAus?
Fencehopper