Dubbo RAAF Stores Depot
The Dubbo RAAF Stores Depot is an heritage-listed former Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) stores depot located at Cobra Street, Dubbo in the Dubbo Regional Council local government area of New South Wales, Australia. The depot was designed by Sidney Williams & Co and built from 1940 to 1943. It is also known as Dubbo RAAF Stores Depot (former), No. 5 (1942) and No. 6 Stores Depot (1942–52); No. 2 Stores Depot Detachment D (1952–92); Defence National Storage and Distribution Centre Detachment (1992-1995). The property is owned by private companies, Andorra Developments and Belmorgan Property Development. The depot was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 29 June 2004.
Dubbo RAAF Stores Depot
Consultation with the Aboriginal community in 2003, which included meeting with a number of Elders, confirmed that the former RAAF Depot site is an important place in the living memory of the Dubbo Aboriginal community. Several generations of people had lived in tents and shanty buildings in the native bushland in the State Forest that later became the RAAF base, that was known as "the Pines. Older people in the community had fond memories and would retell stories of the time spent there. It came up frequently in oral history recollections. The Aboriginal people living in the Pines were moved out to make way for the RAAF base in the early 1940s and there were few Aboriginal memories associated with the site once the military moved in. Only one or two Aboriginal people were recalled as having worked there. It was thought that the scarred trees on the RAAF base site would have been marked by earlier tribal Aboriginal people rather than by the twentieth century Pines community. The existence of Aboriginal burial sites was not advised at the meeting.