DOWN at Rathmines there's a quaint, ageing wall sign in a small wood-panelled room on the waterfront.
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Dating from the 1940s, it's a relic of a bygone era; of wartime days in this once sleepy village on the western shores of Lake Macquarie that became an important cog in the Pacific War virtually overnight.
The sign, in faded gold lettering, reads: "Players must not lie on the billiard tables". That's understandable, but tired RAAF servicemen, out of sheer exhaustion, apparently often decided late at night to stretch out their limbs on the welcoming rectangular tables once there.
Pushing aside the cues, the men would rest on the green baize and drift into the land of nod. And there, on these unlikely makeshift bunks, the men with heavy eyelids, would try to forget that day's duties and what lay ahead tomorrow. Even if it sometime, death seemed to beckon.
This former billiard room was once a side annex of the giant recreation hall and gymnasium operated by the RAAF. That's when Australia's largest flying boat base once operated in this bushland suburb from 1939 during WWII.
Today, re-opened after a $3.3 million refurbishment by Lake Macquarie City Council, the former community hall in Stilling Street has been rebadged the Rathmines Theatre. It is used as a performing arts centre, for functions and even as a large picture theatre.
The current event being held in the former billiards room (now Rathmines Heritage Centre) on certain advertised days for a few hours is Service and Seaplanes - the story of Rathmines RAAF base (1939-1961) told in photos and exhibits with a silent 1940s black and white film screening continuously.
Looking outside over the tranquil waters of Lake Mac today, it's hard to image the hectic day-to-day life on the base in its heyday. Back then, hundreds of seaplanes came and went each year with almost 3000 personnel there at its peak from 1944-45. Ten units served at the base from seaplane squadron officers and crew to those in the flying boat repair depot, the marine section and WAAF members.
After WWII ended in 1945, the RAAF kept the base going until November 30, 1952. The Rathmines base was then disbanded in 1961 and many of the buildings were dismantled and removed.
In its prime, Rathmines Air Base was a crucial centre for Catalina flying boat operations, from long-range reconnaissance, coastal patrols, hunting enemy submarines, to daring rescues of coast watchers spying behind enemy lines and even laying mines in distant Asian harbours to bottle up enemy troopships and cut vital military supply lines.
From 1942, Catalinas painted black and nicknamed Black Cats roamed the western Pacific by night on hazardous missions. These silent hunters had an aerial range of almost 5000 kilometres.
The sight of these slow-moving, noisy, cramped, twin-engine Cats has never been forgotten by those who were lucky to have once witnessed them so long ago.
Among the fortunate ones is Maitland man Lindsay Watson. He spurred my interest into visiting Rathmines a week ago after telling me about some of his memories after WWII.
"I was only a kid then when I went boating with a relative on the lake near Kilaben Bay. Suddenly, an RAAF crash boat appeared and we were told to quit fishing and get out of the way," Watson said.
"People were yelling, 'There's a plane landing. Get out!'. You remember that sort of experience.
"I also remember some trees on a peninsula there were cut down. It was for a landing strip with water on either side. It was to allow single-engine aeroplanes like Cessnas, I think, to land there."
Later, on attending the Rathmines exhibit, I chatted to another visitor there who said his father had worked in security at Rathmines RAAF base decades before.
"The people from that time were incredible. My father, for example. He never talked about the war, ever. And you know why? They had signed a paper, the official secrets act, which forbade them to talk," he said.
It's a common story. Sadly, this veil of wartime secrecy was never formally lifted, so many memories were lost.
Luckily, the present Rathmines gives some insight into that dark, secret time.
The exhibit tells us that, before the RAAF arrived at the once remote bush site, there were about 32 buildings, mostly weekend cottages, with only a few permanently occupied. Plans were made by the Defence Department to resume them along with 300 blocks of land. Until then, the only major influx of visitors to the suburb (population 100) was in the Christmas holidays when the population swelled to 1000 with coalminers and their families descending on the area from Cessnock and Kurri Kurri.
Later, during the war years, the site often became frantic. Rathmines RAAF records show that between December 1941 and March 1943, No.11 Squadron undertook 10,523 flying hours, lost four crew members and dropped 4974 bombs.
At the same time, the base's No.20 Squadron logged 9628 flying hours, lost five crew members and dropped almost 4000 bombs on active duty.
Six Catalina crews from Rathmines also flew from Australia on the audacious low-altitude mission to mine Manila Harbour in the Philippines in December 1944. The round trip of about 3300 kilometres took roughly 80 hours and was done in stages.
At Kilaben Bay, near Rathmines, there's also a marvellous project by a group of dedicated enthusiasts to restore a rare, virtually intact, former Catalina for future static display as a permanent tourist attraction at the old, historic air base.
Despite obstacles, the project's volunteers, mostly retirees, are pressing ahead with what would be the prized gem on the Lake Mac tourism trail.
The 1943 amphibious warbird was rescued from a slow, decaying death in Puerto Rico when bought for $20,000 in 2013. Until then, the 19.2 metre long Cat had survived by being used as a fire bomber.
Now, I know the remaining original Cats are old, but why are they now so scarce? The warbird was, after all, very versatile and practical until the present day.
Well, many have been cannibalised for spare parts over the years. But sometimes, they have come to a very unusual, and theatrical, end.
As author Simon Beck reveals in the latest issue (November 2020) of the magazine Aeroplane, five engineless PBY-5A Catalina hulks were spectacularly destroyed for the camera in the Hawaii attack sequence in the 1969 film, Tora! Tora! Tora! The movie recreates the infamous Japanese attack on Hawaii's Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941 - an event that directly brought the US into WWII.
A sixth Catalina, N6108, was also used, both as an on-screen aircraft and as a camera-ship to film some scenes in Hawaii. It was finally lost in the mid-Pacific in January 1994 on a flight to New Zealand. Most interestingly, N6108 was well-known for its role as a CIA communications aircraft during the 1962 Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba.
The Rathmines Service and Seaplanes display closes on March 14. It will be replaced on March 20 by an exhibition of historic Rathmines photographs by Max Dupain
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