// End Of An Era
This article was reprinted with permission of The Press and replaces our regular Air Force Museum feature.
Photo Courtesy: Gavin Conroy, Classic Aircraft Photography, Ph 027 220 3573.
A P-51 Mustang and a Harvard
The last air show at Wigram Airfield at the weekend was a sad occasion for many of the participants. The long-drawn-out closing down of Wigram for aviation activities has finally reached its end. Later this month, an era of New Zealand aviation history, which began almost a century ago, in August 1916, will conclude.
On the field where numberless pilots and other aviators honed their skills in peace and war a new residential property development is planned. The Air Force Museum will stay to remind visitors of what once occurred there, but apart from a couple of hangars and the Art Deco control tower, put to new uses, little will remain of the old Air Force Base.
While the end is an occasion for some legitimate sentimental nostalgia, it has long been foreseen and had become inevitable. The area is a prime piece of real estate ripe for the sort of development that is planned for it. Some such outcome was practically unavoidable after the National government of the time decided 18 years ago that Air Force training had to be consolidated to two Bases and that Wigram would not be one of them.
It is right that people should feel affection for the area as a centre for aviation activities. Although it began as a private flying field in 1916, within seven years its owner, Henry Wigram, after whom it was soon named, had given land and buildings to the government and shortly after that the New Zealand Permanent Air Force, the precursor to the Royal New Zealand Air Force, was based there. At one time it was a substantial community – it had 427 buildings, 35 kilometres of roads, 16 hectares of lawns and gardens, a rifle range, a cinema, a dance hall, a swimming pool and so on. Even relatively young people will remember the daily buzz of Harvard training aircraft droning through the summer sky.
In 1995, after the Air Force moved out, Ngai Tahu, which had first claim on the land under its Waitangi Treaty settlement with the government, bought it with settlement money. The price was agreed after appropriate independent valuations were done.
Ngai Tahu made it clear, from quite soon after it took possession of the land, that its plans were to develop the property and those plans did not include any provision for the continuation of flying activities. At one point, some in aviation circles held out hope that the airfield could be retained for flying, an idea that perhaps gained a little traction when there was some talk in the Christchurch City Council of leasing it back for aviation uses.
Outside consultants soon quashed that idea by demonstrating conclusively that it was not commercially viable. Much as flyers may regret the loss of a field so handy to Christchurch, the closing of Wigram gives an opportunity to fields in Rangiora and Ashburton to promote their facilities to the aviation community.
Ngai Tahu’s plans for the area, meanwhile, are to create a well-organised village on the site, ultimately containing more than 2100 houses and 5000 people. These ideas reflect the city council’s Urban Design Strategy for higher density here rather than elsewhere, with growth in the south-west of Christchurch. If this plan comes into being it will give new life to an area that has had a memorable past.