A CEREMONY at Ham Common last Sunday, August 28, was exactly 100 years since an event that was as important to Australia historically as the start of railway construction in the 1850s.
The event was the foundation of the NSW State Aviation School at Richmond in 1916, marking the start of large amounts of government funding coming into the site of the future Richmond RAAF Base, now so important to the Hawkesbury economy and the national operations of the RAAF.
The start of the aviation school was also an opportunity for local boys to acquire undreamed-of skills, which would take them around the world in the new aviation industry.
On August 28, 1916, 400 guests were at a lavish opening inside the aviation school's new hangar on Ham Common (in the middle of today's RAAF Base). The Windsor and Richmond Gazette covered the months of preparation for the event but gave the opening a sour review. It turns out the invitation list had not included the Gazette editor! (Such details as this are from a new book on the aviation school, "Billy Stutt and the Richmond Flyboys" by Neville F. Hayes).
The Richmond hangar was rather large for the needs of the school but was the main reason the RAAF took over the site in 1925. The school was clearly a pet project for the NSW Premier, William Holman, which annoyed the defence forces and the federal government, in its clear attempt to barge-in on the centralised war-training efforts of the Commonwealth.
Federal versus state disputes figure continuously in the story of the Richmond School. While the first graduates got commissions as officers in the Australian Flying Corps, this was not the case for later graduates. In total, 58 flying certificates were issued by the school before the war ended and quite a few of the earliest graduates made it into action in France and Palestine.
Nigel Love, in the Gazette on August 24, graduated from the first intake. He piloted an RE8 two-seater aircraft over the western front in Europe with the 3rd Squadron of the Australian Flying Corps. His biggest impact was when he used Morse Code to guide Allied gunfire to key German targets.
Flying low and dodging bullets during major battles, Nigel also mapped the progress of the infantry and took his reports directly to General Monash's headquarters.
Seven of the graduates were killed in action in the war, or in European training accidents. Remarkably for the time though, the Richmond School had no fatal crashes during its six intakes. This is a testament to the skill and personality of its chief instructor, Billy Stutt who died in 1920 while on a search-and rescue mission in Tasmania. His body was never found.