NEWSLETTER Cairns Bushies Reunion 16th July 2016 63 people attended the 2016 reunion at Brothers Leagues Club in Cairns on July 16. Some photos have been placed on the Bushies.net website. More will be added as they become available. To view the photos, open the Bushies.net website and go to People / Bushies Bashes/ 2016 photos. The reunion doors opened at 11 am, lunch was served at 1 pm and there were still a few stayers who ventured down to the gaming rooms at 4 pm. Memorabilia A feature of the gathering was the volume of memorabilia that was available. Several former staff members contributed a range of items, photos and documents. Grahame Brett has spent a great deal of time in gathering and presenting his collection. We congratulate him and extend our thanks to him and everyone else for sharing this extremely interesting display. Attendees enjoyed being able to refresh their memories and remember the past. Tribute to Beryl Entsch Another feature of the reunion was the photos of Beryl Entsch that were placed in the venue. Beryl passed away just on 12 months ago and in his opening speech, Lionel Dyer paid a special tribute to her. Attendees and Apologies (See attachment) Attendees at the reunion consisted mostly of former employees and their families. However, there were several others who also attended and they included, former regular passengers, refuelling agents and contractors who were associated with Bushies between 1951 and 1988. Future reunions All agreed that the reunion was a success and are already looking forward to the next reunion which will be held in Brisbane in June 2017. The details will be published on the Bushies.net website when finalised. The next Cairns reunion will be held in July 2018. Details to follow.
Available resources Lionel also reminded everyone of the many resources that are available to interested parties to locate and understand more about the history and the people at Bushies. A summary of resources. N RESOURCE CONTACT COMMENTS O 1 Bushies Website www.bushies.net bushiesinfo@gma il.com Former Cairns staff member Graham Jeffries has spent years developing and updating this very informative website with significant input from many other former Bushies employees This website is recording 4134 hits per month It contains information on the history of the airline, names of all staff members including photos from the past and more recent, various aircraft, Publications/ videos, gossip and lots more. Updates, corrections, additions are welcome. Send your contribution including photos of aircraft, people and places to email bushiesinfo@gmail.com or post them to Lionel Dyer, 43 Red Peak Blvd, Caravonica QLD 4878 2 Facebook Owen Capp 1. Go to the following link http://www.facebook.com/messages/ #!/groups/455172154518245/ and forward a request to join. 2. This Facebook group is for any former staff members of Bush Pilots Airways (BPA)/Air Queensland which operated in Queensland from 1951 to 1988. The purpose of the group is to share memories and photos and to communicate any reunions or events. To limit the size of the group, membership will be limited to staff only, not family/friends etc. 3. Owen Capp is the Administrator of this webpage.
3 Our Aviation Pioneers display, Cairns Domestic Terminal, Cairns Airport 4 Queensland Air Museum, Caloundra http://qam.com.au/ 7 Pathfinder Drive, Caloundra, QLD, Located at the bottom of the stairs to the Qantas Club lounge within the Cairns Domestic terminal, this display provides very extensive details of the history of the Aviation Industry as it relates to Cairns and specifically the Cairns Airport. The owners of the Cairns airport have very successfully provided an important link to the development of the Cairns airport as well as our forefathers in the industry. Bushies features significantly within this display. The Queensland Air Museum is a not-for-profit community owned aviation museum located at Caloundra Airport in Queensland. Its mission is to collect and preserve all aspects of aviation heritage with an emphasis on Australia and Queensland. The museum has the largest collection of historical aircraft in Queensland and it also has a large collection of aircraft engines, equipment, artefacts, photographs and books. Bushies recently donated a DC3 instrument panel and carburetor to this organisation for display purposes. See photo on bottom of page 4 of this newsletter. Visit the website and do a virtual tour. See former Bushies Aircraft VH- DZY (C402) and VH- BPV (Metro) as well as former Comalco Piagio VH- BHK but painted in Queensland Air colours. This aircraft, along with several others, was serviced and maintained by Bushies Engineers at Cairns Airport. 5 Cairns Museum Upon completion of the refurbished Cairns Museum which is anticipated in 2017, the Cairns Museum, Corner of Shields and Lake Streets, will feature additional historical detail relating to Bushies history.
6 Reunions One reunion (sometimes called Bash ) is held annually. The Cairns reunion is held every even year (i.e. 2016, 2018 etc), usually in July. The Brisbane reunion is held every odd year (i.e. 20015, 2017 etc), usually in June. For details of the next reunion, go to Bushies.net website 7 Publications 1. Bush Pilot by Sir Robert Norman, Founder and Managing Director AND 2. A History of Bush Pilots/ Air Queensland by Ron Entsch, General Manager. The book is available to read or download from http://www.bushies.net 8 Web site http://www.bing.com/search?q=trove.nl a.gov.au%2f&src=ie- SearchBox&FORM=IESR02&pc=EUP P_ Internet Trove is an Australian online library database aggregator; a free faceted-search engine hosted by the National Library of Australia, in partnership with content providers including members of the National & State Libraries Australasia. (Wikipedia). Find and get over 496,032,508 Australian and online resources: books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, archives and more including press releases and news items up until 1955. We will soon be placing several newspaper stories and Press releases from a variety of newspapers that provides details of what was making news between 1951 and 1955. It contains some very interesting and previously unknown stories about Bushies and the people of Bushies..
9 Connecting the Nation: Australia s Aviation Heritage. This resource is oral histories of aviation heritage. It is a collaborative project between Airservices Australia and the University of Canberra. Former General Manager of Bush Pilots/ Air Queensland Ron Entsch is one of the many people who agreed to be interviewed and contribute some background and context relating to their experiences during the many years in the Aviation and Airline industries. A significant component of the Ron s interview relates to Bush Pilots/ Air Queensland. It also addresses his periods of employment with East West Airlines and Ansett as well as his period as an Adjunct Professor of Aviation Management at Griffiths University s School of Aviation and serving six years as a Board Member of Air Services Australia. How to access the interview. 1 0 DVD currently under production Ron Entsch, Kingsley Mundey To access the 50 min interview, www.connectingthenation.net.au Click on Explore our Collections Oral History- browse to find the interview withron Entsch. DVD is being produced featuring Bushies personnel, aircraft and destinations. It is anticipated that the DVD will become available by the Brisbane Bushies Bash in June/ July 2017. More detail will be provided when finalised.
Donation to Queensland Air Museum, Caloundra DC3 instrument panel in the photo below and a DC3 carburettor have been donated by former Bushies employees to the Queensland Air Museum in Caloundra. Special thanks to Kingsley Mundey for providing transport for both items between Cairns and Caloundra. (See item 4 in the Summary of Resources table above.) Cheers for now from Lionel and Lyle. July, 2016