Queensland Air Museum

The Queensland Air Museum, at Caloundra Airport on the edge of town, has an impressive collection of vintage aircraft for a regional museum. Over 65 aircraft are on display, covering the full arc of Australian aviation history from the 1920s through the jet age.

The displays are at their best during the regular open days when volunteer mechanics are working on the aircraft. Caloundra Airport is still an active general aviation airport, so you often have light planes taking off and landing a few hundred meters away. It is more engaging than most aviation museums of similar size.

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The museum's collection includes a De Havilland Vampire — one of the first jet aircraft to enter service with the Royal Australian Air Force — and a Douglas DC-3 Dakota that served during the Second World War in the Pacific. The museum is run entirely by volunteers, many of them former RAAF personnel, who restore and maintain the aircraft themselves. Several of the aircraft can be climbed into on open days, giving a visceral sense of what it was like to fly machines with cockpits the size of a wardrobe.

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