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
The RAAF Stores Depot, Dubbo is significant for demonstrating the principal characteristics of military stores depots erected during World War II, in terms of both landscape and buildings. The landscape is significant for demonstrating the retention of trees as a strategy for camouflaging the site to minimise the risk of aerial attack. The resulting stand of Cypress pines also harks back to the State Forestry uses of the landscape, and is representative of the original vegetative cover of the Dubbo region, as a remnant which escaped the rigours of intense and cyclical farming that has altered much of the rural landscape in the region. The contemporary large scale, open and wooded nature of the site, with its scatter of very large storage buildings, also provides a unique component of the urban character of Dubbo. The Igloo stores, Bellman hangars, Sidney Williams Hut, Rabaul store and former Inflammable Liquids store are of exceptional interest, as a group, for demonstrating the range of prefabricated and pre-cut structures and building technology employed and developed during World War II. The buildings have a political and technical significance for indicating how standing design preferences and practices were overthrown as part of national wartime reorganisation.