Warbirds over Awatoto: Working bees get Hawke’s Bay Model Flyers Club back in the air

Club members prepare for Warbirds over Awatoto on February 10-11. Photo / Connull Lang

It’s hard to keep a good flyer down, as the Hawke’s Bay Model Flyers Club again comes back from catastrophe to stage Warbirds over Awatoto.

Its airfield was flooded in January last year, but the club’s annual big event still went ahead as planned ... and then came Cyclone Gabrielle, which destroyed the Awatoto-based club’s shelter, seating and fencing. Logs and other river debris buried the area and it made some wonder just what would be next.

The devastation of the Hawke's Bay Model Flyers Club's facilities after Cyclone Gabrielle last year. Now the club is ready to fly again at Warbirds over Awatoto on February 10-11.

“Working bees, working bees, working bees,” said chairman Marty Hughes, and now about 50 flyers and at least 1600 spectators are expected when Warbirds over Awatoto takes off again, on February 10-11.

Hughes, whose father is also a member and a veteran model flyer, said while logs demolished the club’s structural facilities and the access, the airfield had survived comparatively unscathed, and there had never been any thought the event might not go ahead in 2024, as long as there was access.

The Awatoto industrial district had restricted access for months after the cyclone because of the devastation across its business sector, but access there now is to the airfield, off Waitangi Rd on the bend opposite the Ravensdown fertiliser works.

Warbirds over Awatoto is now a long-standing February attraction in Hawke’s Bay, at facilities the club has had for about 40 years.

“A year ago, this was just devastation,” says Hughes, pointing to the work that has taken place to reinstate the shelter and seating.

“We did it ourselves. Working bees!”