Cootamundra World War II Fuel Depot is a heritage-listed former fuel depot and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) stores depot and now public park at 219 Sutton Street, Cootamundra, New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1941 to 1943. It is also known as Cootamundra World War II Fuel Depot Site (former No.3 AIFD), Inland Aircraft Fuel Depot No.3, IAFD No.3, former World War II RAAF base, Petrol tanks and Ampol service station. The property is owned by Ampol and the Cootamundra–Gundagai Regional Council, a local government authority. The depot was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 27 February 2015.
History Aboriginal land The traditional owners of Cootamundra are the Wiradjuri, for whom the Murrumbidgee River was a plentiful source of shellfish and fish. Plants, tubers and nuts of the country between the major rivers supplied seasonal food. Larger game such as possums, kangaroos and emus were captured by groups of hunters to make up a varied and nutritious diet.
The dislocation by European colonists of normal Aboriginal routines of life was increasingly severe from the 1830s and the new diseases took a terrible toll. There were predictable problems over cattle. A series of incidents along the Murrumbidgee near Narrandera have been called the "Wiradjuri wars". The result was that the Wiradjuri were deprived of their riverine territory and driven to the hills or to local employment on the stations. Men worked as cattlemen, general hands, sheep-shearers and flour grinders, and women as domestic servants and child carers. Ultimately many Wiradjuri people ended up living in the towns established to service those who had supplanted them. By the late nineteenth century few of the surviving Wiradjuri people lived a traditional life. The numerous towns of the area, which became closely settled with irrigation schemes during the twentieth century, contained an increasing Aboriginal population. Today in the region, most Wiradjuri people live in Narrandera and Griffith, with significant numbers in Wagga Wagga, Leeton and Tumut and smaller communities in Junee, Harden, Young and Cootamundra.
Colonisation and early history of Cootamundra In 1829 the first British explorer Charles Sturt ventured into the Murrumbidgee Valley. Within 15 years most of the water frontages along the Murrumbidgee were occupied by pastoralists. John Hurley and Patrick Fennell obtained permissions to pasture stock on the Coramundra Run in the 1830s, which by 1849 had grown to with an estimated grazing capacity of 600 cattle and 3,000 sheep.Caskie 2000, 1CLHS 2008 Meat prices soared in the 1850s and the Murrumbidgee stations "became a vast fattening paddock".
Cootamundra was surveyed and a plan of the proposed village was drawn up by surveyor P. Adams in 1861 on a site that was originally the horse paddock of John Hurley's station. The first town lots were sold in 1862. Like many other towns in the Riverina, Cootamundra's population increased with the brief gold rush of the 1860s. By 1866, the village had a population of 100, a post office, a police station and two hotels. The succeeding decades saw the triumph of sheep over cattle particularly on the saltbush plains at the western end of the region. The corollary of this pastoral expansion was the clearing of much of the bush, the sinking of wells, the building of dams for stock and the systematic fencing of paddocks.
The rail network helped in the growth of farming industries. Cootamundra's train station, linking into the main southern railway that links Sydney and Melbourne, opened in 1877. The development of Cootamundra was slow and steady and it was gazetted on 20 May 1884 as a municipality of . The town was finally gazetted as Cootamundra in 1952, changed from the official name of Cootamundry by which it had been known since 1860. The locals had always used the name Cootamundra. It became a quiet yet prosperous agricultural community. As of 2009, Cootamundra had a population of around 7,500 in the whole shire with a further 2,000 in the surrounding district.CSC 2009
Cootamunda early aviation history The aviation history of Cootamundra began in 1917 when W. J. Stutt landed in a paddock near the Cootamundra Showground in his Curtiss biplane during a flight that established a long-distance record for Australia:
By 1921 the strategic advantage of Cootamundra's location about mid-way between Sydney and Melbourne led to the Australian Government purchasing of Quinlan's paddock on the northern edge of the town, making Cootamundra one of NSW's earliest rural aerodromes. With the implementation of an airmail service between Australia and Britain, Cootamundra was chosen as the southern terminus. The airfield was used as a base for airmail contracts temporarily from 1934 by Butler Air Transport, providing connection to Qantas services between Brisbane and Darwin. However the company relocated its base to Sydney when the airmail contract was withdrawn in 1938.
World War II and aviation in Australia When Australia entered World War II in September 1939 on the side of Great Britain, the war was far distant in Europe. However Australia soon became part of an international scheme to train pilots and aircrew across the British Empire. Known as the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS), the scheme was instrumental in up-skilling many of the airmen who fought in Europe, the Middle East and the Mediterranean.Robertson & Hindmarsh, Vol.2, 41-4 A full range of training aerodromes had to be created to implement the scheme, which included initial training schools, elementary flying training schools, service flying training school and the air observers' schools. By the late 1930s the presence of the well-established aviation facilities at Cootamundra and its convenient location on the Sydney Melbourne railway line made it ideal for the use of the aerodrome as a military base and EATS training facility.Brew 2001: 21-24 Gough Whitlam, later Prime Minister of Australia 1972–75, received navigation training at the No.1 Air Observer's School at Cootamundra for several months in late 1942.Hocking, 2008, p88
Aerodromes were also needed for training, maintenance and defence to meet the needs of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Airfields were redeveloped across NSW including Cootamundra as well as Mascot, Narromine, Tamworth, Narrandera, Temora, Uranquinty, Deniliquin, Parkes, Camden, Evans Head, Wagga Wagga. By 1940 the Royal Australian Air Force had completely taken over the control of the Cootamundra aerodrome and Squadron Numbers 60 and 73 operated from the base.
A direction finding station was also built at Cootamundra to service the radio communications system. This system was considered vital in the detection of enemy raiders and for providing data in battle situations.
The presence of the No.1 Air Observer's School, the Cootamundra aerodrome, the convenient location on the Sydney-Melbourne railway line and its safe location inland made Cootamundra an ideal choice for locating the No.3 Inland Aircraft Fuel Depot (IAFD), now known as the Cootamundra World War II Fuel Depot Site.
World War II, Cootamundra and the inland fuel depots A major issue servicing the Royal Australian Air Force during World War II was the provision and distribution of aviation fuel. Transport was difficult due to the large distances involved and the diversity of Australia's railway gauges. Existing storage facilities were small and located only in New South Wales and Victoria, making the supply to combat units stationed in the north particularly impractical and difficult.Kass, date, Vol.2 p117
An Aviation Fuel Committee was formed with representatives from the Australian and American air forces. Following a war cabinet minute in August 1940 approving an increase in war reserves of aviation fuel, the committee recommended the erection of bulk storage fuel depots in inland locations, safe from attack by sea-borne aircraft. Twelve sites were initially commissioned throughout Australia, chosen on the basis of their proximity to railways, roads and aerodromes, with four of these in NSW: at Cootamundra, Wallerawang, Muswellbrook and Grafton. While originally known as RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) Inland Petrol Depots they were soon renamed Inland Aircraft Fuel Depots (IAFD). Cootamundra was the third site to be commissioned nationally and the first in NSW, and became known as No.3 Inland Aircraft Fuel Depot.
The committee developed various recommendations for regulating the storage sites. A typical IAFD complex was to consist of standard tanks, a mixing tank, pumps, pipe lines, ancillary buildings, receiving and despatching points and railway siding. The storage tanks were initially proposed at capacities of . For purposes of fire protection, the storage tanks were to be separated by a distance of at least 200' (61 m). The RAAF proposed camouflaging the fuel tanks in case of an air-borne attack. The tanks were to be placed in a excavation, surrounded by a bank to act as a compound to isolate and protect each individual tank in the event of a bomb attack and also permit camouflaging by covering the entire excavation with netting and camouflage material. The fuel depots were to be guarded by an army representative so a guard house was also proposed within each IAFD site to enable 24-hour security. Details for the construction of the original 12 IAFDs were approved by early 1941. The Department of Interior was commissioned to carry out the works. Two Australian petroleum companies were engaged to provide the working drawings. Shell Oil Company was responsible for lAFD No.3 at Cootamundra as well as numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.
The site of the No.3 IAFD at Cootamundra was amalgamated from several lots acquired from the NSW State Government, from the Cootamundra Municipal Council and from private individuals. Also included was a council-owned public road and a private road. The site became the property of the Royal Australian Air Force and the Australian Army.
At Cootamundra the construction of the smaller aviation fuel tanks, numbers 1, 2 (with a storage capacity of each) and the mixing tank number 3 () was complete by late 1941. Then the Japanese attack on the United States' navy at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 considerably escalated the threat of a Japanese attack on Australian soil. From early 1942 the number of inland fuel aviation depots was increased from 12 to 31 and in addition many were considerably expanded in their storage capacity. By early 1944 the aviation fuel depot at Cootamundra had two more, much larger capacity fuel tanks, numbers 4 and 5, each with a storage capacity of . These were also much more thoroughly camouflaged with an earthen embankment completely covering each of them. However neither of these two large tanks was ever actually used to store aviation fuel.