This is the continuing photo story of my February trip to Sydney. You can catch up with the previous installments, part one here, part two here and part three here.
All good things must come to an end and so it was that before too long it was time to head back to Melbourne. There is no need to rush these things though and a south coast road trip was called for and planned. Everyone bundled into the hire car, which was a very pleasant Kia minibus thing, heading south via the Princess Highway. Stopping point for the night was to be Narooma or thereabouts so there was no need to rush. The first point of interest was breakfast, but the first target of the day was the aircraft museum at Albion Park on the south side of the 'gong. I had never been to the museum before but the opportunity to have a look at the world's only remaining airworthy Super Constellation was enticement enough to stop.
The museum is really a working heritage restoration site and rather than walking around exhibits behind glass, you pay your admission and you are taken around by a guide who knows all about the different aircraft and has many stories about how they ended up in the hangars in Wollongong. I loaded up some Tmax 400 and pointed the camera at whatever I found interesting. Here is a small selection from the roll, but it really is worthwhile visiting if you have even a passing interest in aircraft.
Tmax 400 of course is a fantastic film, with a couple of caveats. It has tight grain and is nice and sharp with good shadow detail. The areas to be careful of though are over development and Kodak's rampant price increases. Over development gives very dense highlight areas on the neg which are hard to print or scan through. Find a dev time, temp and agitation which gives you negs which look a little on the light side when compared to conventional films and then stick to that and be happy. I'm using my usual half dilution B HC-110 and I'm happy. Kodak's prices are a problem because you will probably like the film but go broke trying to pay for it. You can suck it up, or look to Ilford. I am doing the later for the moment. I loved the results from FP4 in part one and two of this series so I have just stocked up on FP4 and HP5 at about half the price of the TMY.
Back to the photos. The first hangar has this Convair painted in old TAA colours from the sixties, the Mirage in the opening photo, an ex-RAAF Orion, ex-RAAF F-111, Vampires, an ex-RAN Tracker, and lots of other things as well.
The tour then went outside to see the world's swishest looking aircraft, this thing is cooler than Miles Davis. No other words, get there and have a look.
There is also a DC-4 next to the Constellation which is under restoration.
Another notable aircraft is an ex-QANTAS 747-400, perhaps the most remarkable thing about this one is that they were actually able to land it on what is really a regional airstrip. You probably know what a 747 looks like. This is a different view that normally only the maintenance people see.
There are of course many more things to see but that will almost do for this post. I'll finish off with some typography from a vintage refueling truck on display which the designer in me could not pass by.
OK that is it for this post, I'll be back with more thoughts and images in part five.
