Community & Business
23 January, 2025
Dubbo Airport upgraded
Dubbo Regional Council (DRC) has received more than $14.6 million from the federal government – the biggest grant ever made to the council – to upgrade and strengthen the airport’s main runway.
As devastating fires continue to rage in California and Australia swelters through another hot summer with its own bushfire concerns, the news last week that Dubbo Regional Airport will soon have the capacity to land and support large airborne firefighting resources locally was welcomed.
Dubbo Regional Council (DRC) has received more than $14.6 million from the federal government – the biggest grant ever made to the council – to upgrade and strengthen the airport’s main runway, associated taxiways and aprons to support the operation of large, very heavy air tankers and emergency service aircraft.
This critical infrastructure project will cost an estimated $30 million, with the federal funds coming from the Growing Regions Program and the other half of the funding to be matched by DRC. It will help the council realise its long-term plan for an emergency services hub at the airport, according to DRC mayor, Josh Black.
The airport currently houses the Rural Fire Service (RFS) Training Academy and Centre for Aviation Excellence, and the NSW Police Regional Educational Training Centre.
Two-stage project
Mayor Black said this funding is for stage one of the project, which is expected to take 18 months to complete.
A second stage, to be funded separately and carried out at a later date, will see the runway extended. This will also bring benefits to the airport’s capacity to service domestic air traffic, he said.
The airport fields over 23,000 plane movements each year, transporting almost 200,000 passengers.
Building resilience
The federal government duty senator for Parkes, Deborah O’Neill, who flew in for the announcement on Wednesday, January 15, joined mayor Black, deputy mayor Phillip Toynton, and RFS assistant commissioner Jayson McKellar at the airport to talk about the grant and what it would achieve.
“Dubbo is centrally placed to be able to contribute very significantly to fire crises across this great state,” senator O’Neill said.
“These upgrades will build resilience and will mean the airport can be part of a rapid response in the event of natural disasters such as bushfires in eastern Australia,” she added.
“The upgrade will allow larger air tankers owned by the Rural Fire Service to use the airport, which is currently not possible.”
Aerial firefighting to benefit
The group made the announcement standing in front of RFS [Water] Bomber 164, which assistant commissioner McKellar said was based at Dubbo Regional Airport.
“With these upgrades to the airport here, we’ll be able to expand the use of the airport [to include] our C-130 Hercules large air tanker,” he added.
He said the ability to host larger aircraft with additional water-carrying capacity than Bomber 164 was “a game changer”, enabling up to 29,000 litres of water and fire retardant mix to get relatively quickly onto a fire from the available aircraft.
“The ramp and the runway need to be upgraded to take that sort of weight, and this is what we’ll have access to once these works are complete,” he said.
The water and fire retardant mix – which he confirmed did not contain “forever” PFAS chemicals – is pumped quickly to the bombers from an RFS emergency services sub-station adjacent to the tarmac.
Assistant commissioner McKellar said over 200 fires were started across the state from storm activity just after Christmas, which emergency services had managed to control earlier last week.
Funding questions
Senator O’Neill was at pains to point out that the decision to award DRC the funding for this project was based on merit.
She did field questions about the controversial decision to axe funding for the much-vaunted Dubbo Sports Hub at the expense of a similar project in Orange, and indicated she chaired the committee that selected projects for Ministerial sign-off. The senator encouraged the council to consider applying to the Growing Regions Program for the Sports Hub project.
Federal member for Parkes Mark Coulton welcomed the funding announcement but said he was disappointed there weren’t more successful projects for the Parkes electorate, which geographically covers half of NSW.
Mr Coulton pondered whether the timing of the Growing Regions Program grant round, which fell during the caretaker period ahead of the NSW local government elections, played a role in several deserving projects from smaller councils failing to gain support.
