Events

Every April, when the river gums along the Murrumbidgee begin to glow silver in the early light, the field at the Wagga Model Aero Club comes alive in a different way.

On ANZAC weekend, the usual whine of electric trainers gives way to the throaty hum of meticulously crafted warbirds. The club’s annual World War II tribute event is small by national standards, but to the pilots and families who gather there in Wagga Wagga, it feels as significant as any airshow.

Across the tarmac, models of Spitfires, Mustangs, and Kittyhawks sat in careful rows, their paint schemes faithfully recreated. One stood out: a scale model of a Bristol Beaufighter in RAAF markings, its olive drab finish dull under the morning sun. Its builder, a retired mechanic named Col, had spent three years shaping balsa and fiberglass into something that looked ready to taxi straight into 1943.

 At ten am, the engines began to turn. 

The first takeoff was a Spitfire, lifting smoothly into the sky, banking over the paddocks with a grace that drew a collective breath from the crowd. Soon, three more aircraft joined it, circling in loose formation. The sound—carefully tuned four-stroke engines—echoed over the field, not loud enough to frighten, but deep enough to stir something older. 

As the day wore on, laughter returned, sausages sizzled on the barbecue, and children chased each other between parked cars. Yet every takeoff held a thread of remembrance.

And as the sun dipped low over the paddocks of Wagga Wagga, the last warbird made a solitary pass down the strip, wings rocking gently in salute—an echo of history carried not by full-sized engines of war, but by careful hands, shared stories, and a club field where memory still takes flight.