Nhill Aviation Heritage Centre memorial entrance project receives state government funding
NHILL will have a new addition in time for its centenary of aviation celebrations in November.
The Nhill Aviation Heritage Centre and Hindmarsh Shire Council have received a state government grant to build a memorial entrance and interpretive signage at Nhill's Second World War RAAF training base.
Heritage centre president Rob Lynch said the committee was blown away to receive the money.
"It's another one in a line of exciting things that have happened to us," he said.
"We get so astounded - it's unbelievable what's happened here over the past 10 years.
"When we put in for the grant, we hardly expected to get it.
"We were advised to change our application to just have a memorial walk so that we would get the money, but we bit the bullet and said, 'Bugger it - we want a memorial at the front entrance, where everyone can see it as they drive in'.
"We got the whole $30,000 we asked for because we stuck to our guns.
"It really blew our socks off when we got it."
Mr Lynch said the memorial to the more than 10,000 RAAF personal who lived and worked at the base between 1941 and 1946 would feature two stone walls either side of the Nhill Aerodrome entrance.
"The walls will taper up from about three feet to six feet high. They will be about seven metres long," he said.
"The entrance will be fairly wide - eight to 10 metres or so.
"Then just inside the gate we envisage, down the track, having interpretive signs for what is around - the air ambulance station, the Nhill Aero Club, the heritage centre, and the recreational vehicle area we've got there now."
Mr Lynch said the memorial would be built on-site, and would be ready in time for the town's air show on November 2, which will this year celebrate 100 years of aviation in Nhill.
The event will feature a range of recreational and wartime aircraft plus aerobatic displays, sky-diving and vintage aircraft manoeuvres.
Hindmarsh Shire mayor Ron Ismay said the memorial entrance to the aerodrome would reflect the importance of the training base to both the RAAF and Nhill.
He said the interpretive signing would give visitors an insight into what the base looked like during its active years.
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