Corruption.

Everyone loves a good outrage story and this one is an absolute ball tearer.

Those familiar with the northern part of NSW may know a sleepy little town called Evanshead which has some pretty great aviation history, its still used as an electronic warfare targeting range today, but in its heyday had an amazing airport with a multitude of runways where many trained, flew and learnt to drop munitions onto the live firing range off to the south.

In recent years it has been home to just a few local general aviation aircraft and more recently (10 years ago) the Aviation Museum which notably holds one of the several discontinued F-111 flying pigs. Fast forward a bit more and it seems Richmond valley council decided to sell the airport. The group originally proposed to buy had plans for maintenance facilities and conference centre and all on paper seemed like a great aviation idea… however it would seem that consortium of people kinda changed somehow….and on the sly in 2020 the airport was sold.

Now..just for a brief second, think of how much land is on a airport.. a fair bit right.. so you expect in recent property price booms that would probably be worth a fair bit, even as just commercial land. We have seen how lucrative that is in say Bankstown airport which was also sold several years ago and has been slowly been dismantled and sold off to non-aviation interests, amazon full-fillment warehouse anyone ? Just waiting for the local flying school to plant a plane onto that roof!

Back to that sale figure… ok, so we might need to cleanup the site right.. could be a bit of contamination right, being a airport and all….. that might knock a bit off that sale price shine, so how much you reckon? 50Mil ? 20 mil ? that would be a bargain right ? nope.. sold for 3mil.

Fast forward to 2024 and guess what, there is now a multiuse housing development on the town side of the airport… its amazing how quickly things can happen when there is real estate involved 🙂 . Now, take another guess how much the average house on the main road here costs to buy ? any where from 1 to 1.5mil. so how many houses you gotta sell to make you purchase price back? no fing many right.

There is someone out there making a truckload of money off it now…

Back to the aviation side of things… anyone gonna take a guess and whats gonna happen now – noting there is no flying aircraft on the airport anymore, no regular yearly flyin and airshow.. its also now too difficult for the average ultralight flyer.. or actually average private pilot to fly in ….. what does that mean.. well guaranteed the owners will then say no one uses it any more so they can’t afford to keep to open as a airport right..convenient huh..

But what about the aviation heritage and history here you say? back to the museum… which by the way has to pay RENT to the airport consortium called Evans Head Airpark… haha, should be called Evans Head Housing Park. This is their link back to justifying they are actually maintain some of the heritage of this site.

Yeah I am outraged. If your ever passing through Evanshead, be sure to stop in and support the Museum.. its run by volunteers who love aviation, its a great little museum and is really affordable if you want to take the kids, its like 25 bucks for a family or close to, you pay extra to sit in the cockpit of the F-111 and get a photo but thats worth it I reckon, they need more volunteers so if you love aviation and are a local consider sharing some time with them.

If you know anyone on the Richmond Valley Council, give them hell for selling this, this does not pass the pub test in any shape or size.

Here is the link to the agenda meeting of May 2020 where the sale is mention, see Section 18.7.

A couple of pictures I took when I was there, I love these old cockpits and there is a shot of the F-111 as well.