AUSTRALIAN FLYING CORPS MEMORIAL
RAAF BASE POINT COOK
Over 60 years ago the members of the Australian Flying Corps Association (AFCA), which, in Victoria, later became the Australian Flying Corps Branch of RAAFA, contemplated a memorial over a number of years and finally settled upon the present design and chose Point Cook as its location.
The memorial was given into the custody of the RAAF at a ceremony on 16 November 1938. The presentation was made by Mr A. E (later Sir Albert) Chadwick and accepted by Chief of the Air Staff, AVM (later AIRMSHL Sir Richard) Williams (extreme right in the photo below). Thereafter members of the AFCA made an annual pilgrimage to the Memorial in November, as close as practicable to the anniversary of the World War 1 armistice, because its original purpose was to pay tribute to the members of the Australian Flying Corps who served during that conflict.
The inscription on the memorial reads: “Dedicated to the glorious memory of our comrades of the Australian Flying Corps, Royal Naval Air Service, Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force who at the birth of the air service during the Great War 1914-1919 made the supreme sacrifice and whose sacred trust of imperishable honour and duty to country now given into the keeping of the Royal Australian Air Force Association”.
It was not until 1973 that a bronze plaque was added to the memorial’s base bearing the inscription: “In Memory of Members of the Royal Australian Air Force Association who served in the 1939-45 War and subsequent Wars.”
Subsequently, bronze plaques affixed to plinths set in the lawns surrounding the main memorial, have been dedicated to RAAF operations in the Korean War as well as several units. In March 2010, plaques commemorating RAAF Radar Units formed at Point Cook and RAAF operations in the Vietnam War will be dedicated.
The eternal ashes of several former RAAF members have also been scattered in the garden surrounds.
In the late 1980s, when the number of members of the Australian Flying Corps Branch had fallen to the point that the Branch could no longer maintain the tradition of the Pilgrimage, alone, the then Victorian Division State Council of the Air Force Association agreed to accept responsibility for conducting the annual November 11th Remembrance Day Pilgrimage.
AIRCDRE K Watson AM, Commander Air Training Group, delivering the 2008 Pilgrimage
Address after being introduced by RAAFA President Peter Colliver (at rear)
RAAF Vietnam Veterans lay a wreath: 2008 Pilgrimage
A section of the crowd attending the 2008 Pilgrimage
In early 2009, the Memorial underwent a general refurbishment. Interestingly, descendents of the original masons assisted in the project.
The Refurbished Memorial: 2009