12:00a.m. 29th October 2008

Qld Air Museum volunteer worker Don Cameron displays the recent awards from the Caloundra Business Awards on October 24, 2008.

When a new award category is specifically created for a particular organisation, you know it’s time to sit up and take notice.

The Queensland Air Museum won the best tourism business, employing 10 or more, in the recent Caloundra business awards and also took out the president’s award for the most outstanding contribution to Caloundra on the same night.

“We were very honoured to win the tourism business award,” Don Cameron said. “And then to get a second award, which was created specifically to acknowledge our contribution to the local business scene, when there hadn’t been a president’s award in previous years, that felled us a bit.”

Chamber of Commerce president Loretta Searchfield said the air museum, which has been at Caloundra since 1986, deserved the award, particularly as it was managing to trade well despite the proposed relocation of the airport in 2014.

“The judges were very impressed with the dedication and the value of the museum,” she said.

“It’s an icon in the area that a lot of the locals haven’t been to and we’d like to get them to go and have a look at what they could possibly lose if they don’t support the retention of it.

“We would like to see it stay in Caloundra and at its current site. We feel it is an integral part of Caloundra.”

Mr Cameron said the museum entered the awards with the relocation threat partially in mind.

“We were hopeful it might help our case to stay where we are,” he said.

“We have had no news and we won’t get any news until cabinet has made its decision. We don’t know when that is and we have had no feedback.

“We are up in the air and in limbo like everybody. We’re going ahead as best we can, but holding our breath the whole time.

“We make repeated representations to have our lease area excised if the airport closes, because we need to be on the tourist strip. Any move to relocate us would cost more than $10 million.”

Mr Cameron said the leases of all tenants at the airport expired in 2014 and were not being renewed, due to the investigation of alternative sites sparked by the positioning of the CAMCOS rail corridor.

“We have expanded our premises over time and we could put another annexe out one side and another hangar, which we need, but until we get some finality we can’t do much about attracting public grants,” he said.

“Until we get a degree of certainty, it is very difficult.”

The Queensland Air Museum attracts 12,000 visitors a year, who come to see its 67 planes, 62 engines and aviation-related exhibits. Mr Cameron said its open cockpit weekends in July were also proving popular and the attraction has been “on a roll” for the past five years.

Last week, it emerged the State Government is considering four Glasshouse Mountains sites for the new airport.