Townsville Neptune

Many years ago there was Neptune at Townsville owned by a group with which
Peter Rundle of Rundle Air was involved.

272

If I remember the story properly the military had two of them, kept one
and sold the other to this group. The unsold one was badly neglected, to
everyone's great annoyance. Or has it now been resurrected as a static
display?


The RAAF retained two Neptunes at Townsville - one which has been restored
to taxi standard several times by different groups and which I last saw
standing and looking fairly forlorn at T'vlle base, the second was christmas
treed for the first and soem of its bits also found their way to Rundle's
machine. The Christmans tree ship is the one on display as a gate guardian.

Curtain Brothers also purchased a Neptune intending to mount it on a pole at
their privately developed airfield at Bluewater - for many years it lay
disassembled and stacked in front of their factory complex at Bohle - some
bits from this one also ended up in 272. I believe that Curtain bros machine
has now been scrapped.

A 4th Neptune made its way into the Beck collection, then located in
townsville, but since relocated to Mareeba - last i saw of this one it was
assembled and under cover, but sadly neither restored or conserved, I'm
pretty sure that a servicable engine was swapped from this one for 272 at
some stage when boith were still in Townsville, and according to Sid the
last time I spoke to him hae has made other serviceable parts available to
HARs on an exchange basis.



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