In 1967 in Australia a private aviation facility was established to train pilots, primarily with airlines in mind. It was located at a place called Cessnock in NSW Australia. The course was 9 months full time and cadets lived onsite. There were several intakes of cadets at various stages of the course on site at any time.

Each groups of cadets was refered to as a flight of a particular color e.g, blue flight 79. Flights generally had about a dozen cadets. The course was the first integrated pilot course in Australia and at the time very progressive. From memory you had to complete the course or risk it all as most of the training wasn’t recognised outside the facility. Pilots completed 150 hrs of flying, gained a private, then commercial licence, class 4 (NVFR) rating and multi engine endorsement. From memory there were around 32 ground course exams for which you only got 2 chances or bombed the whole course. Most of the ground instructors were ex airline or atc guys. Flying instructors were often ex cadets whe returned to work there after becoming instructors and gaining adequate experience.

Aircraft used were Cherokees, Warriors and later Tomahawks. Arrows were used for CSU endorsements and a Travalair or Seneca for twin endorsements. The academy also used a couple of GAT trainers. Vetting of cadets in the first instance, and clever use of the GATS for initial sequences before you started in actual aircraft often meant cadets solo’d in only several hours.

After each group of cadets completed their course a graduation cermonony was held on the parade ground, often with guests from Qantas etc. The facility operated until the late 80s I think. Originally it was called the Nationwide Aviation Space Academy (NASA) later the name was changed to a more appropriate Civil Aviation Training Academy (CATA).

My post is really only relevant and of significance to ex cadets of which there are quite a few in here who may have been interested.