Last updated — 04 July 2026
Webpage by Greg Weir
Recently I was gifted the Warren Penny collection, which included logbooks, flying cap, personal papers & two reels of film, photos & slides, navigation equipment, original flight bags, maps, and more. The collection will be documented and then forwarded on to its new home at the Airways Museum at Essendon later in the year.
The two reels of film have now been digitised, and a link to the video is below. The short silent film shows the airlift of sheep and people around the NSW township of Brewarrina in March 1956.
Many thanks to Maurice Austin and the team at the Airways Museum for the outstanding job they have done in bringing those two old reels of film to life.
Warren describes his flood relief flying at Brewarrina, which commenced in March 1956 and continued for many months. He wrote the following:
“As I ran out of hours in VH-AZX, I would change over to Marshall Airways' other Anson VH-ASM at Narromine and then I would get AZX back after it had been serviced at Bankstown. Sid Marshall and Jack Davidson used to fly the aircraft up as required. The whole operation was so interesting that I decided to make a documentary movie of it.
I got an old friend of mine, Roy Griffith, to come up from Sydney and he shot hundreds of feet of 16mm film in glorious Kinecolour. I later had it made into an almost-newsreel film lasting about 20 minutes. I still have the original colour in the can. The work print stands only as a monument to my ego.
It hasn't earned a shilling so far. The ABC liked it, but would not pay for it.
We had about twelve aircraft operating from this narrow strip. As the floodwaters subsided, the main aerodrome at Brewarrina became open again. One of the Austers VH-KAW had a prang one day and we got a picture of the pilot, Bill Taylor of Central Western Aviation Service, Nyngan, being taken out of the wreckage.”