By Esther Lauaki
Anyone in the market for a private airport in Sunbury should be prepared to pay a lofty price for it.
Penfield Airfield has landed on the market and is expected to fetch about $25 million. The 108-hectare Settlement Road property includes two runways, 15 hangers with space for 50 aircraft, a pilot training centre with a flight simulator and control centre, two houses, a granny flat, grazing land and a paintball field.
Owners Wendy and Vince Goulthorpe snapped up Penfield Airfield in 2003 for $800,000 from the man who built it – Alexander “Doc” Penny, a member of Australia’s top secret Z Special Unit during World War II.
“He got the nickname Doc because he was in the medic area and was mistaken for a doctor but he wasn’t … and the name just stuck with him,” Ms Goulthorpe told
Star Weekly.
“Doc just allowed it to be known in the last few years that he was part of the Z Force commando unit.
“He told us that these commandos used to be dropped behind the Japanese enemy lines during the war, out of one of his favourite aircrafts called The Liberator.”
She said that Mr Penny realised his dream of owning an airport when he discovered a “neglected farm” in 1969 where he later opened Penfield – short for Penny airfield.
“He built the hangers, and it just took off from there,” Ms Gouldthorpe said. “The farm needed a lot of cleaning and clearing. Doc was a builder by trade so he built the main hanger and we made improvements over the years as he aged and couldn’t do the work any longer.” The couple bought the airfield and developed the property into a thriving family business that pulls in $1 million per year through the pilot training centre, a paintball field and stock feed business run by their son Douglas.
The Goulthorpe family closed down a busy flying school they ran from Penfield in 2016 after head instructor Terry Otway and a trainee pilot tragically died in a plane crash near Lancefield.
“Everything is ready to go if someone wanted to start it up as flight school again,” Ms Goulthorpe said.
“The family is moving in different directions and we want to retire … it’s time for us to move on.”
The property is in a Green Wedge zone which prevents it from being developed into residential lots.
