A Ride To One Of Australia’s Most Enjoyable Aircraft Museums
Story and photos: The Bear
I asked my AI buddy to define “museum”, and here is what it told me: “A museum is an institution that collects, preserves, studies, and displays objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Museums serve as educational resources and offer visitors an opportunity to engage with and learn about various aspects of human knowledge and creativity. They often feature exhibitions, interactive displays, and educational programs to enhance the visitor experience.”
That’s a lot to ask for, but there’s a surprising number of venues all over the place that come up to this high standard. Many of them do it with mainly private support, admittedly often helped out by local or even State government, and with enthusiastic volunteers. Few of them achieve as high a standard as Hunter Warbirds, the aircraft museum at Scone Memorial Airport in the New South Wales Upper Hunter Valley.
More than anything else, the museum is the legacy of Col Pay, who was one of the founders of warbird restoration, building both a collection and a business. He established the art of vintage military aircraft restoration through Vintage Fighter Restorations at Scone. Col developed an international reputation for excellence based on his experience returning rare World War II fighters to the air. He died in 2007 at the age of 75 while testing a new fire-bombing system.
The collection at Hunter Warbirds mostly relates to the Hunter Valley and ranges in age from a WW1 De Havilland DH-82 Tiger Moth biplane to one of the RAAF’s post-WW2 Mirages and includes several aircraft built by the Commonwealth Aircraft Factory – a Mustang, a Wirraway and a Winjeel. Naturally there are Spitfires, and the museum’s volunteers are even building a mock-up of the Spitfire’s great rival, the Messerschmidt Bf-109, as a counterpoint. A MiG-17, originally from Poland but now painted in North Vietnamese colours with the numbers of one of that country’s ace flyers, makes an interesting contrast.
Best of all, there are several outstanding motorcycle roads that lead to Scone from Sydney. Since I only had two days to check out the museum, I took the easy way and punted my borrowed Tenere World Raid up the Sydney-Newcastle Freeway before opting for some fun at the Freemans Waterhole turnoff. After a coffee and pastry (both passable) at the venerable Oak milk bar, I headed over the Sugarloaf Range to Kurri Kurri and then (another copout) to the Hunter Freeway and continued to Muswellbrook. Here I turned off onto Kayuga Road, which is unfortunately short of the Hunter Belle Cheese Café where I’d normally stop in, and stayed on back roads through Dartbrook to the outskirts of Scone.
It's pronounced “skohn” not like the edible “skonn”.
Here it’s just a left turn at the first roundabout to Scone Memorial Airport, marked by the huge dark grey hangar that is Hunter Warbirds. I pulled up in the parking lot and wandered over to the office, where the kind lady behind the counter offered to look after my helmet and jacket as well as admitting me for the old folks’ admission charge of $18. There are a few – a very few – souvenirs for sale, as well. After a coffee and avocado wrap in the small, homely café I took the swinging door to the interior of the hangar.
I won’t bother you with details of the next three hours or so – I know how boring other people’s obsessions can be. Let me just say that the displays are quite accessible, and although you can’t walk fully around most of the planes you can see all of them. One of the volunteers offered to give me a guided tour and I took him up on that for a little while until we both realised that his and my pace were going to be very different, and we parted on good terms.
Since I had more time on the way back, I headed across to Merriwa in the morning. From here, the Golden Highway offers an enjoyable route all the way to the Putty Road. There was no fuel at Bulga, with the sole petrol pump awaiting repair but the bike’s twin tanks got me comfortably to the other end of the Putty. Only problems for the day were 40o heat and the Putty’s endless roadworks. But – miracle of miracles – as I reached Wilberforce and the Sydney traffic, which can broil you on your bike, it rained. Just a drizzle, but enough, and cool enough, to make the remaining ks comfortable.