Volunteers and students team up to bring the Catalina back

In a warehouse in Beresfield, near Newcastle, a long, slow resurrection is underway. Rescued more than a decade ago from San Juan Airport in Puerto Rico, where it had been left to rust into obscurity for years, is “Our Girl” – an authentic US Navy PBY-5A Catalina flying boat dating back to World War II. Since 2014, the Rathmines Catalina Association has been painstakingly reassembling her in this warehouse with an eye to creating her as a new static display for the RAAF.

“It was built for the American Navy in late ’43, so it’s now 80 years old,” Bill Anderson, president of the association, says. “It never left America, but it was a wartime build. After the war, it was sold, sold, sold; it finished up in South America, flying oil rig workers around, then it was parked at an airport in Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, left outside for about 10 years – so, corrosion, tropical climate. This association purchased it on eBay for US$20,000, pulled it apart, and shipped it back to Sydney. It spent nine years down at Kilaben Bay on private land, and we moved it here two and a half years ago.

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