Rongotai Recollections

Just exactly which year I first visited Rongotai airfield I'm unsure, but it would have been around 1950. My family lived in Wellington's eastern suburbs and my father Joseph, who lived there all his life, had witnessed with enthusiasm the birth of aviation in the capital. He was just sixteen when the first Avro 504’s landed at Lyall Bay recreation ground and, a keen amateur photographer, he recorded this early flying activity and continued to do so, visiting Rongotai aerodrome regularly on weekends, until it closed for redevelopment in 1958.