PLUMBING HISTORY The first run of sheeting going up under the guidance of Bob Kimlin.
Last run - on the first half - alm ost done. Bob Kimlin screwing off, Syd Beck ready to pull up the nex t sheet.
WWII HANGAR
STANDS THE TEST OF TIME IN NORTH QUEENSLAND While it is true that times change and memories fade, there are always those unique projects that stand out clearly in the mind years and even decades later. Sometimes it’s because of the challenges, sometimes it’s because of the design, sometimes it’s because of the story behind it all. For The Beck Museum hangar, it’s a combination of all three that leave it prominent in the memory of former Master Plumbers’ Association of Queensland President and current Trustee, Bob Kimlin. “Having worked for Syd Beck and family previously, Syd offered for me to install the roofing on the hangar in the late 1970s, in conjunction with himself, family, and volunteers,” Bob Kimlin said. “Having completed this roof and its challenges, despite not having done one before and the lack of any modern workplace health and safety protocols, it has stayed in my memory ever since.” “I think I would be the only living plumber/drainer/roofer that achieved this. With my good teaching, Syd and his team then successfully reinstalled the roof in the mid-1990s, after the building was relocated to Mareeba on the Atherton Tablelands.” The building’s story was born in the frantic early days of World War Two in the Pacific, when a French engineer Mr Bresway was among escapees from Singapore, fleeing just before it fell to invading Japanese forces. After arriving in Australia, American forces quickly put his skills to work designing ‘hides’ for B-17 Flying Fortress bombers. The hides took the form of arches, with a few 4x2 purlins supporting camouflage netting. Extra arches were soon added and a full roof, creating the igloo familiar to many airfields. Being French, Bresway designed in metric, so his early buildings must have been an immense challenge to the imperial feet-and-inches builders of the day.
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This particular igloo, with its metric dimensions, was built by the Australian Department of Works in 1943, for the rapidly-expanding World War Two air base at Townsville. Interestingly, the arches pivot on two, six-inch-long pieces of two-inch water pipe, filled with concrete. Similar pipes form the butting surfaces at the top. It was not long before the metre-wide arches were redesigned in imperial and things became much easier for the construction crews erecting later igloos. The Beck hangar originally had a corrugated iron roof attached with lead head nails. Later, it was re-roofed in specially imported Duralumin so it could serve as a radio maintenance shed – the special roofing not interfering with radio waves. While all this was happening, a young Syd Beck had a passion for aircraft and history sparked by a wartime airstrip next to his school (the Weir State, which still exists in Townsville) and American troops camped around his family farm in the Upper Ross. As a young boy, he enjoyed rides in army trucks and Jeeps and visits from nurses and others securing fresh food from the farm. These two threads came together as his growing collection of old aircraft needed a home, at the same time the Federal Government decided to dispose of Hangar pivot on the hangar. concrete butt.
