‘Austeritis’ strikes Graeme and Margaret Smith

My name is Graeme Smith of Kempsey, NSW and my first introduction to flying Austers was in 1986, courtesy of my mate Hilton McLeod’s ADS. I’d been flying since 1973 and was keen to buy my own plane and Hilty’s powers of persuasion led me to the pilot seat of his Auster. My first impression was that it was a rattly, noisy old machine, but then … after a while, somehow it didn’t seem that bad. Appealing, even. Charismatic. Before I knew it, ‘Austeritis’ had struck and there was no looking back.

Within a year I was on the search for an Auster of my own. My first attempt saw Hilty and I in Springshore, Central Queensland, at a clearance sale that included an Auster Mark V. But the bidding was too keen and the price too high, so I left with a full chequebook and an empty trailer.

I couldn’t stand the thought of arriving back home in Kempsey empty-handed, so I said to Hilty: “Why don’t we just call into Gatton and buy some onions so I can fill up the trailor?”. He just said “Don’t be so stupid.” So then I got to thinking about a local Auster KAQ that had left Kempsey for Geelong, and thought I might ring the owner to see how he was getting on with it, just on the off chance...

The way I remembered it, KAQ needed a re-build. It was an Auster J1B built in 1950, assembled at Kingsford Smith Aviation at Bankstown. Its first owner was from Craddock in South Australia, so KAQ ended up on a station property there. After that it did some glider towing at Wakerie in SA. Then ended up in Kempsey for a while before going to Murwillimbah to the Challenor brothers, where it suffered an engine swap. After that, it was sold to Bill Bunting in Geelong.

I parked the empty trailor by the side of the road and phoned Bill from Ballina on the North Coast of NSW. Bill was an airline captain and hard to get hold of, but fate was on my side, and I talked to him for a while before buying KAQ there and then over the phone. He’d had a dream of rebuilding it that didn’t transpire, so it was sitting in a paddock deteriorating rapidly.

So, I arrived back in Kempsey, the proud new owner of an old Auster. The only problem was that it was sitting at the other end of the country. So as soon as I got home I parked the trailor and jumped on a coach bound for Geelong. Hilty, my co-pilot, shared the no-stops 20 hour ride. I wanted to strike while the iron was hot.

We arrived in Geelong, did the deal, carried out some essential patch-work - including rebuilding the magnetoes - and flew it home to Kempsey the next day. The flight back was very cold and we had a bit of trouble getting over the hills from Geelong. Hilty and I were sitting up there with holes under our feet and blankets over our laps. A few stops and 10 hours’ flying time later we finally landed in Kempsey.

Well, I couldn’t pull KAQ to pieces without having some fun first, so 12 months later the restoration work began. The motor was in good condition, so we did an airframe restoration, painting it in an original Auster paint design. It took around five months to do and we had it ready in time for the 1988 Bicentennial Airshow at Richmond.

My wife Margaret soon acquired ‘Austeritis’ and together over the past 15 years we’ve attended most Auster rallies and national Antique Aeroplane Association of Australia (AAAA) fly-ins. In total, we’ve done around 600 hours in KAQ without mishap, bringing its total flying time to around 2300 hours.

Accompanying us on most of these trips is Hilty and his girlfriend Maureen Knight (another ‘Austeritis’ carrier) in a Mark III ALS. Today, Hilty and I are working on restoring Auster BYF and it should be finished sometime after we get started on it.