At about 6am every day Ken Saywood wakes up to the sound of planes taking off metres from his house.
He does not reside under a flight path in inner Sydney or Brisbane — he’s living in a regional Queensland airpark.
“We wanted to come somewhere where we could have our aeroplane close to a runway and this was the ideal spot,” Mr Saywood said.
His two-storey home is among dozens that are just metres from Whitsunday Airport’s 1.4-kilometre runway.
“Sometimes it gets quite noisy here in the mornings when we’ve got lots of scenic flights departing,” Mr Saywood said.
It’s premium economy all the way for Denise Saywood in seats from a Qantas aircraft. (ABC Tropical North: Liam O’Connell)
The noise is offset by the convenience of his own hangar adjacent to the house with easy access to his pride and joy — a 1980s seaplane that was designed to carry tourists across the 74 Whitsunday islands.
“[These seaplanes] were the vital link to the islands, and for the tourists, carting freight, and now helicopters [have] taken over,” Mr Saywood said.
“It’s still a perfectly serviceable aeroplane — they can be maintained virtually forever, these light aircraft.”
He said his home – a one-minute car ride away from the runway – was “the perfect place for people who’ve got aircraft, who love aviation and who want to fly easily”.
Just metres from the runway, airpark residents have built-in luxuries like swimming pools. (ABC Tropical North: Liam O’Connell)
A community built on flying
Whitsunday Airport manager Lee Holloway first heard of the airpark concept while visiting the Avalon International Airshow west of Melbourne.
“I saw this amazing little stand that had homes on a runway and I know it’s pretty popular in the [United] States, but nothing had been done like that [around the Whitsundays],” Ms Holloway said.
“We’re just very lucky that we’ve got the reef and Whitehaven [Beach]. Literally, as soon as you depart here you see islands and it’s just stunning.”
A home at the Whitsunday Airpark, near Airlie Beach. (ABC Tropical North: Liam O’Connell)
The airpark concept — a housing estate for recreational pilots and aviation enthusiasts to house their aircraft on their doorstep — originated in the United States but there are multiple developments in Australia in Queensland, New South Wales, and Western Australia.
In Queensland’s tropical north, the airstrip, 7.5 kilometres from Airlie Beach, dates back to the 1960s, when seaplanes would transport not just tourists but vital supplies to the outlying island resorts.
The 57-block site has been slowly filling with houses for the past two decades but is still far from capacity.
The land to either side of the airstrip is divided into blocks, ranging from 1,000 and 1,400 square metres.
Some further west are reserved for shed-like hangars with in-built living quarters, while others to the east are set aside for more substantial houses.
A larger block will set you back nearly $500,000, and that’s before you consider the cost of building on an airstrip with more than 100 aircraft movements a day.
By comparison, a small aircraft can be held in a hangar at the airstrip for $22 a night, or just over $8,000 a year.
Lee Holloway says the airpark has built a community of people who love flying and seeing the Whitsundays from the air. (ABC Tropical North: Liam O’Connell)
Ms Holloway said it was a win-win situation.
“Everyone’s got a completely different background, but the one common thing they love is aviation,” she said.
“It’s fixed-wing or helicopters and they all sit and talk and then they start travelling — they do trips, they talk about the trips.”
Where hangars become a home
About 87km north of Mackay, developer and aviation enthusiast Garry Poole has been developing plans for a decade for a hybrid housing-hangar precinct at the Lakeside Airstrip.
Garry Poole in his home, with his bird “Geraldine”. (ABC Tropical North: Liam O’Connell)
“We had warbirds in there, we’ve got Tiger Moths, a lot of ultralight aircraft, general aviation aircraft,” he said.
“[At Christmas], we get all the locals out, take the school kids up for a fly around, bring them down, and show them what happens.”
Mr Poole purchased the rural land near the Bloomsbury airstrip in 1981 to store his aircraft.
He said aviation was a lifelong passion.
“Some people like playing golf, some people like swimming, some people like horse-riding. Some people like flying aeroplanes. Simple as that,” Mr Poole said.
In the last 10 years, however, plans to expand the strip into a hybrid housing-hanger precinct have developed.
Mr Poole’s vision for the homes included a view of the lake and a 1.1km airstrip.
Garry Poole says aviation enthusiasts are being drawn to the region in increasing numbers by its beauty. (ABC Tropical North: Liam O’Connell)
“I tell people, ‘If you can’t land in 1.1km, give it away,'” he said.
The nearly 30-lot development has seen significant interest: out of 10 blocks in the current stage, eight have been sold, ahead of an official opening later this month.
‘I always wanted to fly’
At Shute Harbour, Ken Saywood said he and his wife, Denise, have found a place where they can indulge their love of flying as often as they can, while they can.
“I started very young. I grew up on a dairy farm in Tasmania, but I always wanted to fly aeroplanes, right from when I was tiny,” he said.
“I have a limited amount of time left when I’ll have a pilot licence, I’m getting much older than I was.
“Nonetheless, we will probably stay here for quite some time, until we’re unable to live here comfortably,” he said.
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