Now 90, Mr Walsh said it seemed like just  yesterday.

“It was a big event back then,” he said.

“I went with Doris McKenzie who worked for my mother and Ted Peel, who worked for Wally Osmond who had a shoe maker and repair shop next to Morison’s butcher shop in Junction Street.

“Doris asked me if I would like to see Kingsford Smith take off – I wasn’t that much into airplanes, I liked cars and Bill had a 1928 Chevrolet and we went up in that.

“It looked like a new car to me, it was beautiful.

“I remember it was the middle of the night that we left Nowra to get there, and it was terribly cold.

“There were four of us in the car, Ted, Doris and myself and some other chap who for the life of me I can’t remember who he was, but I do remember he was a friendly chap.

“When we got to Gerringong (Gerroa) and parked the car I remember us having hot tea from a thermos, which I found amazing. I had never had tea from a thermos before.

“I remember there was great conversation among the men to the fact that [Kingsford Smith] had got his petrol tax-free or something like that. He had apparently got his petrol, I thought it was from Wollongong under what they called ‘bondage’, saving something like 25 pounds.”

Mr Walsh said it appeared Kingsford Smith took his plane back to nearly Jerry Bailey (now Shoalhaven Heads) to take off.

“He seemed to go a long, long way back,” he said.

“He took off towards Gerroa and went out to sea – we were down on the beach near the rocks.

“[The plane] was very noisy; you could hear the petrol drums moving about as he took off.

“He had Wright Cyclone engines on board which were far superior to the Avro ones the plane came with.

“I was glad I didn’t miss it but it didn’t have the excitement that I thought it would.

“It was a bit like letting off a big skyrocket, once it’s let off, it’s all over – it was a bit of an anticlimax.

“Everyone just packed up and went home.

“But it was a great adventure; my mother Kathleen always made sure we were able to go to things like that if we could.”

Mr Walsh said the beach had a long association with motorsport.

“I remember them often using Seven Mile Beach as a runway for planes.

“They used to also use the beach for car and motorbike racing.

“It had what they called negative tides when the water would go way out and they used to race on the hard compacted sand.

“They had about four hours of racing before the tide would start coming back.

“They would enter the beach about opposite where the caravan park is today and had chain wire on the beach to make easier access.”