General News
9 August, 2023
Flyers reunite after 60 years
Horsham Flying Club is on the final approach towards a milestone birthday. The club was formed on March 20 1963 as Wimmera Soaring Club at a public meeting in the Horsham Town Hall - and later this month three of its founding members will reunite...
Horsham Flying Club is on the final approach towards a milestone birthday.
The club was formed on March 20 1963 as Wimmera Soaring Club at a public meeting in the Horsham Town Hall - and later this month three of its founding members will reunite with their mates to draw the hangar doors aside and roll back the years.
That initial gathering took place after Sunraysia Gliding Club made its first weekend visit to Horsham and introduced gliding to the region.
Starting with a Slingsby T31b two-seat glider and a De Havilland Tiger Moth as a glider tug and initially operating from a paddock in Curran Road, the club operated from sites at Lower Norton, Kalkee and Dooen, before settling at Horsham Aerodrome in 1967.
Apart from providing an opportunity to learn to fly gliders, the club established Horsham Week, a week-long gliding competition that has now been attracting visiting pilots from across Australia for over 57 years.
The club reached its peak membership of more than 70 in the 1970s but experienced a decline into the 1990s with the encroachment of alternative aviation opportunities.
Steve McFarlane is one of three founding members still around to enjoy the 60th anniversary celebrations this year.
"It's luck when I say three surviving members," Mr McFarlane said.
"The three of us are all local. I haven't heard of anybody else for a long, long time."
Horsham Flying Club is the relatively new name of Wimmera Soaring Club and Wimmera Sport Aircraft Association, which joined forces in 2004.
In the early and mid-1960s the club operated from paddocks owned by local farmers using a winch and the T31 two-seat trainer purchased from a syndicate at Narromine, NSW.
After establishing itself at Horsham Aerodrome it became an all-aerotow operation, initially with the Tiger Moth followed by a Chipmunk before finally moving on to the first of two Pawnees.
"The community helped us with the facilities out there," he said.
"They look after the aerodrome and the ground and they do look after us.
"We have our competition week and a coaching week and we have other Victorian clubs come up and use our facilities so we bring income into the town.
"A few weeks before we had the gliding competition at the club, and people from Victoria, South Australia and NSW came here."
Past and present members, friends and guests are invited to meet for dinner, speeches and audio-visual presentations at West Side Horsham on August 19.
Michael Hogan, a past president and secretary and now a life member, said he was looking forward very much to the reunion.
“I'm excited to be catching up with the many friends I've made over my 38 years as a member of the club,” Mr Hogan said.
“People are coming from all across Victoria and one is even travelling down from Brisbane to attend.
"It'll be great to meet up again with the people who taught me to fly all those years ago and instilled the love of flying that I still have today.”