Essendon Airport Celebrates 75th Birthday

Essendon – or St John’s aerodrome as it was first known – was officially proclaimed an airport on August 11, 1921. The first building was a timber hangar, purchased from a private aerodrome at Glenhuntly and relocated. It was leased to J H Larkin, who was overhauling aircraft engines there by December 1921. There is no record of the aerodrome being officially opened – it just began operating. The late Frank Roberts recalled flying for Larkin there early in 1922. Through the 1920s and early ’30s, the aerodrome was much used by aviation legends such as Harry Shaw, Bert Hinkler, Kingsford Smith and Ulm, Scotty Allen, Jimmy Mollison, George Matthews, Jimmy Melrose, Bob Hart, and Arthur Schutt – happily present at the 75th anniversary celebrations in person!

During the war years, a RAAF Elementary Flying Training School was established at the airport and the Department of Aircraft Production constructed several large brick buildings for its Beaufort Division. A number of RAAF huts survived until the early 1950s. By 1940, aircraft using Essendon were increasing in number, size, and weight, and it was evident that the airfield would soon be inadequate. It was decided to divert Bulla Road bordering the west side of the field, and to acquire several hundred acres to the west. With the construction of the north-south runway in 1946 and the east-west runway a year later, the airport took on the basic shape we know today. Postwar, growth in activity at Essendon was rapid, and in 1949 the Aero Club and light aircraft were relocated to Moorabbin.

The domestic airlines, Ansett, ANA, and TAA all had their maintenance bases at Essendon. The most historic buildings remaining today are the old “DCA Hangar”, built in 1924 and now located at the eastern boundary, the ANA hangar and passenger terminal on Bulla Road, opened in 1938 for the company’s new DC-3s operations, and the curved-roof hangar alongside it, built in 1934 for Holyman Airways’s disastrous four-engined DH.86 biplane airliners. The first permanent Aeradio station in Australia was sited within the Essendon reservoir compound in May 1935.

By the early 1950s it was apparent that Essendon would not be suitable in the long term for the jet aircraft which would in time bring international passengers to Melbourne. On July 1, 1970, international operations were transferred to Tullamarine, while domestic operations moved there on June 21, 1971. Thus Essendon has continued for these 75 years, but not without threat to its existence. Noise complaints are nothing new; in 1930 residents complained of the “drone of Moth machines on Saturday afternoons”. It can only be hoped that today’s pressures to close the airport will be no more effective than they were 66 years ago!