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Dick Peel readies for action in a “blister” gun position of Lake Boga’s Big Cat.

BIG CATGETS THECREAM

Lions Clubs raise money in many creative ways. Victoria’s Lake Boga club might have just eight members yet it’s created a fly-away moneyraiser based around one of only 17 of the world’s remaining Catalina flying boats.Each year 20,000 people pay to see the club’s 16-tonne, 31-metre wingspan Catalina PBY5, a restored relic of World War II.Housed in a massive lakeside hangar on the site of the secret wartime No.1 Flying Boat Repair Depot, the “Cat” is the star of a biennial air show that regularly attracts 5000 visitors, bringing an estimated whopping $2.5 million into the nearby 989-population town of Lake Boga.

From beer to Cat baseVisit this showpiece tourist attraction just below Swan Hill on the Murray River and you might be lucky to meet colourful Lion Dick Peel, 87, the club’s longest serving member (40 years) and co-ordinator and co- founder of this incredibly successful venture.“This is unbelievable and to think it all started over a glass of beer,” proudly reminisces Dick under one of the Cat’s gigantic wings. “After Lions, the members used to meet down the pub and talk and one night we got to thinking that we should find a few bits of an old Catalina and stick them in the park by the lake as a monument to those who worked and served here ... not dreaming that it’d end up like this.”

Good and bad memoriesFor this Lion, who amazingly gained his own flying licence after taking lessons at age 72, the Cat in its museum hangar holds mixed memories.Born locally, Dick recalls the flying boat depot, established as a safe haven after 16 flying boats were destroyed in

Wartime relic brings in the dollars for Lake Boga Lions!

Photos and Story by Tony Fawcett

Japanese air raids on Broome in 1942, from its earliest days.In fact, he remembers flying in one of the base’s lumbering Cats as a 12-year-old. “I’ll remember it alright, to the day I die,” he assures.“Scotty Allen, the base’s commanding officer and who earlier in his life had flown with Australian aviation pioneer Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, was out at our place and my birthday was coming along and I heard him saying to my mother that he thought he could organise a flight in a Cat for the ‘wee laddie’ (he was a broad Scot) for his birthday.“Well I heard it, and I couldn’t get to school bloody quick enough to tell all the kids about it. “When the day came and I got in the plane there was a huge whirr from the engines and we taxied right over to the other side of the lake there, and off we went with spray everywhere.“It was unbelievable, I couldn’t see anything because of the spray, lots of turbulence and the perspiration was starting to flow from my forehead.“I thought ‘I don’t know whether I like this or not’. Anyway Swan Hill came up and there was a big bank around it and, being a military plane there were no sick bags, and I decorated the aircraft as well as myself.”Thankfully, Dick’s inglorious flying debut didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for Cats.

Dog ranger’s discoveryToday, the Lions flying boat museum is managed by flying enthusiast Daryl Allen with a team of five, with regular payments going to the club, allowing members, all volunteers at the base, to pursue other community projects.As Daryl explains it, today’s flying boat was re-created from about 80% of a flying boat spotted behind a shed at nearby Nyah West by the local dog ranger, a Lion, on his farm rounds.Using the remains of two other flying boats, it was trucked to the lake and painstaking brought together by Lions volunteers over a 5-10-year period. Until nine years ago it was displayed in the open. “Then in 2008 the beautiful lake went dry after the Millennium Drought and with some bad luck came some good luck,” says Daryl. “We were able to get a grant to build this beautiful air conditioned and heated hangar.”About the same time a nearby secret underground communications bunker was restored and the display of wartime memorabilia around the Cat was greatly enlarged.The Cat, which bears the registered number A24–30, was one of many from the base used as patrol bombers, for reconnaissance and to lay mines around the Pacific that sank many Japanese vessels. Dutch aircraft bought by the Royal Australian Air Force in 1942, the Cats were based in northern Victoria because the near-circular Lake Boga allowed for easy take-offs and landings.

Thumbs up from Dick beside the Cat.

Dick Peel mans a gun in a “blister” port of Lake Boga’s Big Cat.

The Cat in its air-conditioned hangar

The base’s secret communications bunker A flying Catalina – Credit -Wikimedia

Fences and chook housesAt war’s end in September 1945, many surviving aircraft were sold off.“Then in ’47-48 the ones that weren’t fit for service were chopped up and sold to farmers,” explains Dick Peel.“After the war you couldn’t buy galvanised iron so the farmers used to buy up bits of wings to make fences and chook houses and other things. There were no angle-grinders then so it was a hammer and cold chisel, and when they dusted up their knuckles a few times they gave that away.”Some engines were used to power farm water pumps. Initially the dog ranger who had discovered the bulk of the plane mistook Dutch writing on the fuselage for German writing and reported back to the Lake Boga club that it was German.“I remember a bit about these planes from when I was a young lad but I don’t recall Hitler flying around in a bloody Catalina,” observes Dick with a grin.

Party baseDuring its busiest wartime years, the flying boat base, built in six months by a workforce of 1000 and home to about 800 servicemen and 200 service women, was called “the Party Base”. Being so remote, personnel felt safe knowing a Japanese Zero couldn’t get there and then back to its Pacific island base without running out of fuel.“Plus, when you threw in a few American and Dutch pilots who were often there you had a good recipe for a party,” says Daryl Allen.At one stage after the war when Lake Boga dried up, nine aircraft undercarriages, 6000 rounds of live ammunition and two hand grenades were found on the lakebed.Currently there are plans to expand the base to incorporate a student education centre.. The flying boat base, which now has a popular restaurant attached, holds regular “splash-ins” for flying boats from around Australia, with a full-blown air show every second year, the next in March 2021 to celebrate the RAAF centenary.

Footnote: When tireless Dick Peel isn’t involved with the base, he assembles a seven-piece Dixieland jazz band in which he plays washboard for local performances.

Lake Boga Flying Boat Museum: www.flyingboat.org.au

Captions: (all pics by Tony F apart from last one which needs a credit for Wikimedia)

Lake Boga Lions are proud of their Big Cat Lake Boga Lion Damian Thomas joins Dick and a moustached pilot

http://www.flyingboat.org.au