West Sale

The gunnery school at Fulham

The land had been part of the 16,000-acre Fulham squatting run taken up in the 1840s. In December 1941 the No. 3 Bombing and Gunnery School was formed at West Sale and buildings went up quickly; training began in March 1942 and the school was renamed the Air Gunnery School in 1943. The Victorian Heritage Inventory record notes that 10 Williams Drive held the living quarters, the men’s and women’s bathroom blocks, mess halls and sports grounds, and that the house at the north of the property served as the nurses’ station.

The school ceased to function in December 1945 and West Sale closed as a military base, converting to a civil airfield. Sale Council pressed for approval as a commercial airfield, but in early 1949 the former RAAF camp was instead designated as the West Sale Immigrant Holding Centre and an instruction issued to stop disposing of further RAAF buildings. Some had already gone, so buildings were remodelled or rebuilt, and the first group of migrants arrived late in 1949.

Families separated by work

The former air-force accommodation was refitted in 1949 for European displaced people. Men worked away during the week and returned for weekends. A school, shop, post-office branch and medical centre provided the basic services of the camp community.

Employment connected the centre to timber production around Heyfield, the Maffra milk factory, the Gippsland Base Hospital, railways and major water and electricity authorities. These were civilian jobs within Australia’s labour-shortage response, rather than work inside a European displaced-person camp.

For Ukrainian families, cheap camp accommodation did not remove the cost of separation. The 1966 account describes workers sometimes living 100–150 miles from their families, with distance, fares and transport preventing regular visits. It presents this as a wider Victorian experience, not a measured average for West Sale alone.

School and childhood

The camp school belonged to the Victorian education system as West Sale State School No. 4648, also called Migrant School West Sale. Its inspector’s report books survive in the state archive, covering school buildings, grounds, teaching and student activities.

One former child resident remembered entering Grade 3, a mother working as the school cleaner and a bus outing to a Cinderella performance in Sale. Bicycle rides near the airfield and outdoor play became lasting memories. The account later follows the family to Newborough, where rented accommodation became their own home.

Adults also had access to language education. AMES’s institutional history lists West Sale among six Victorian holding centres offering daytime English classes when the Commonwealth–state education agreement was signed in 1951. Learning English and schooling were therefore part of the centre’s everyday settlement work.

A self-contained village

The memorial project’s history describes the centre as a self-contained village with a dining room, a hall that also served for church services, a school, a medical centre, a canteen and a post office, but no public telephone. Fulham siding on the railway and the Princes Highway were part of the reason the site was chosen.

The heritage record adds what people did there: classes, a pre-school, dances, plays and sports facilities. It also records that the former nurses’ station, the house called Raeshaw, became the home of the centre’s director and headmaster, which is the only camp office identified in the sources read.

Moving into Gippsland communities

Many residents stayed in the region after leaving the holding centre. Jobs in public works and industry helped connect camp families to towns across Gippsland and the Latrobe Valley.

The Ukrainian retrospective describes the urgency of leaving family camps for rented rooms, small bungalows or partly built homes. By 1955 few of the Ukrainian families it discusses remained in camps. This is a community-wide observation, rather than a closing date or population count for West Sale.

The centre’s end is described as a winding down rather than a closure. By 1953 fewer families were coming under the scheme, many had worked off their two-year bonds and found accommodation in nearby towns, and the remaining families moved into Sale or were relocated to the Somers camp on the Mornington Peninsula before the holding centre was disbanded. A regional account names Ukrainians among the Dutch, Germans, Poles, Russians and Baltic people who arrived in Gippsland from the late 1940s and settled chiefly in the Latrobe Valley around Morwell.

The camp’s place in local memory

A memorial at Williams Drive, Sale Airport, commemorates the holding centre and migrants’ contribution to Gippsland. It marks the actual former base at Fulham.

The site also remains part of current heritage planning. An April 2026 council technical report identifies West Sale RAAF/Migrant Holding Centre as archaeological site H8221-0020. It recommends detailed recording and possible test excavation, with community oral histories helping identify former buildings and places.

The heritage listing describes what is left. The site is about 11 km west of Sale, immediately east of the West Sale Airport, and is now fenced paddocks with multiple concrete building foundations visible in the ground and in aerial photographs. Land west of the central driveway appears undisturbed since the 1950s apart from the removal of the structures themselves. That driveway was the main entrance for the RAAF living quarters and then for the holding centre. The statement of significance acknowledges the site’s value for its use as a displaced persons’ camp alongside its wartime significance.