Community News

Villawood’s Armstrong Mount Duneed has been flying high for a good decade now and is all but sold out and built up and undeniably the prime lifestyle choice within the Armstrong Creek growth corridor.

Noel Murphy reports …

Flying high is more than just a story angle for this award-winning greenfields community. Armstrong is very much steeped in flight – in the area’s history as well as in more contemporary connections.

Take a look at the giant corten steel pelicans you’ll find there, for one.

Fashioned by sculptor Folko Kooper, you’ll find these high-flyers feeding, hunting, guffawing and reposing in varying poses.  They’re named after iconic local surf breaks at nearby Torquay: Haystacks, Winkipop, Bells and Rincon.

Folko’s created plenty of other airborne creations, too – eagles, cockatoos, parrots, nesting boxes, even some hybrid feathered and wedge-tailed airplanes you can find in the aviation precinct playground. It’s easy to find, just throw yourself into the streets named Aviation, Gulfstream, Boeing, Concorde, Compass, Magnetic, Glider and Decalage and you’ll spot them.

Armstrong’s first sales office was set up in an air hangar that once serviced the Geelong Airport where the estate is now situated.

And the artistic images in the perforated brown fascia around 9 Grams café at Club Armstrong underscore the airborne theme even further – pelicans, herons, swans, a Beech Debonair light aircraft.

The old Geelong Airport was located at the northern base of Mount Duneed.  Busy little airport, in the day, offering sightseeing trips along the Great Ocean Road and Otways, light plane private charters, flying lessons …

It began in 1963 when Les Mahon and Arthur Schutt set up a flying school with Alan Searle as instructor. Les famously painted the flight office light grey and dark gray, which Alan had to tell were actually bright red and bright blue.

Les’ colour blindness kept him out of the RAAF back in the war days. Author Kenneth R. Riches says he made his way to England and joined the RAF instead.

The Schutt Flying Academy became Geelong Aviation and Flight Training. Alan joined TAA, various instructors arrived from Moorabbin – all up some 17 were in Schutt’s staff before operations wrapped up in 2011.

Armstrong’s flight theme is fully rounded out, of course, by the 60 different bird species living in and around its wetlands and reserves.

Think pelicans, spoonbills, ducks, waterfowl, falcons, wrens, honeyeaters, parrots, goshawks and many others.

And if you’re wondering what decalage is, here’s a dictionary definition:

Decalage, noun – The difference between the angles of incidence of the upper and lower wings of a biplane: A biplane has positive decalage if the angle of incidence of the upper wing is greater than that of the lower wing and negative decalage when the lower wing has the greater angle.

That’s a real airborne story angle for you.

Noel Murphy is Villawood Properties’ PR & communications manager.