During the WW2 years, the Nhill Aerodrome was the setting for the Nhill RAAF Astro Navigation and later the Aircraft Armament and Gas Schools, where over 10,000 people received training under the Empire Air Training Scheme.
They were often joined at the weekends by the Air Training Corp, where 16 to 18 year old members of the corp received preparatory training before joining the RAAF.
Not everyone was used to living in a small country town that seemed like a dry and dusty backwater to some. However, it may be called Nhill and have felt like the middle of nowhere but the brave men and women who came here to train found a warm welcome, a sense of camaraderie and even a spark of romance.
Corporal Anne Wilson wrote home to her mother about the local dances: “We hardly got inside the door when we were mobbed for a dance. There were at least two boys to every girl and all of them good dancers”.
Nhill base became known as “The Happy Base”; those stationed here found that they were taken into the homes of the locals and given good country hospitality and formed life-long friendships.
It wasn’t just friendships that blossomed either; in the group picture below, you’ll see Ruth James, who married airman Laurie Crouch and Doreen White, who married Arthur Williams and settled in Nhill.
Merv Schneider OAM and his late wife Shirley celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary in 2018. Merv was in the Air Training Corp and met Shirley when her father, who was in the RAAF, was stationed here in Nhill.
With more than 10,000 men and women stationed here over those few short years, you have to wonder how many Valentine’s Day dances, picnics and dates took place and just how much romance went on under our bright stars.
If you’d like to step back into history and feel the excitement of the planes thundering overhead, listen to the music of the era sung by the talented Pacific Belles, and be surrounded by the stories, the uniforms and the memorabilia of these brave souls, many who gave their lives so that we can live in a free country today, then don’t miss the Nhill Airshow on April 13th 2024.
For more information or tickets go to www.nhillairshow.com.au, or phone Jenny on 0417 014 278 or Rob on 0428 911 387.
This article appeared in the Nhill Free Press & Kaniva Times, 14 February 2024.
