The Australian government decided in 1912 to form a Central Flying School. The Australian Flying Corps article dates the selection of Point Cook to 22 October 1912; the Central Flying School article says Henry Petre, who arrived in January 1913, chose 297 hectares at Point Cook after rejecting the government’s preferred site near the Royal Military College at Duntroon as too high above sea level. The two accounts are given here as they stand.

On 1 March 1914 Eric Harrison made the school’s first flight in a Bristol Boxkite. Later the same day Petre took up a Deperdussin and crashed after catching his tailplane in telephone wires, Australia’s first military air accident. The school had five aircraft: two Deperdussins, two B.E.2s and the Boxkite. The first course began on 17 August 1914 with four students: Captain Thomas White and Lieutenants Richard Williams, George Merz and David Manwell. Williams, the first graduate, remembered the school as a ‘ragtime show’ of a paddock, tents and a single shed for the Boxkite.

Point Cook trained the pilots of the Australian Flying Corps for the First World War. The Central Flying School article counts eleven further wartime courses and 152 pilots trained to basic standard; the AFC article says eight courses were completed, the last starting in June 1917, so the course count differs between the sources. No. 1 Squadron AFC was raised at Point Cook in January 1916. The Mesopotamian Half Flight, the first Australian unit to fly operations, flew its first sorties on 27 May 1915 under Petre’s command in what is now Iraq.

The Flying Corps grew to 880 officers and 2,840 other ranks; 175 were killed. Its squadrons claimed 527 enemy aircraft and produced 57 aces, according to Wikipedia. The Central Flying School disbanded in December 1919 and the AFC was succeeded by the Australian Air Corps and then, on 31 March 1921, by the Australian Air Force, which became the Royal Australian Air Force later that year. No. 1 Flying Training School took over the school’s job at Point Cook.

Point Cook remained the RAAF’s only base until Richmond and Laverton were established in 1925, and it stayed the centre of flying training for a generation. The Central Flying School re-formed here on 29 April 1940 under an RAF officer, Squadron Leader E. C. Bates, and moved to East Sale in November-December 1947. From 1961 to 1985 Point Cook was home to the RAAF College, the Officer Training School and the RAAF Academy.

In 1989 Point Cook and nearby Laverton were combined under one command as RAAF Williams, named after Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams. The RAAF Museum, founded in 1952 by Air Marshal Sir George Jones, became a separate unit in 1988 and now displays more than 40 aircraft, among them an Avro 504K, a Mosquito, a Boomerang, a Mirage III, an F-4E Phantom and an F-111G. RMIT’s civil flight school arrived in 1994, and No. 100 Squadron keeps the Air Force’s historic aircraft flying from Point Cook and Temora. The site was added to the National Heritage List on 29 August 2007.

The Air Force’s own description of the base today is modest: 341 hectares, about 26 km from the centre of Melbourne, with No. 21 Squadron, No. 100 Squadron, a security forces flight, the Australian Air Force Cadets headquarters and commercial tenants. It notes that the RAAF Museum is now the largest Defence unit at Point Cook, housed in what it calls the oldest and most extensive complex of military aviation buildings. The ERSA still lists Point Cook as a military aerodrome with three runways, one of them grass, and civil aircraft may land only with the approval of the commanding officer.