VH-AQU   de Havilland D.H.84 Dragon        (c/n   2048)

                               

                                  One tends to forget that the Dragon was designed to have folding wings.  Here, VH-AQU has
                                  the starboard wing folded.  It was probably being brought out of the hangar and readied for flight.
                                  The idea being, of course, to reduce hangar space.  About the only aircraft designed this way today 
                                  are shipboard  fighters.  The venue or time of this photograph is not known, but it was probably
                                  Bankstown.  Also unknown is why the Anson in the hangar is up on its nose!   In the 1960s it was
                                  owned by Sid Marshall and below are two shots of it in Marshall Airways - Charter Service livery.
                                  The upper one by John Hopton (via Geoff Goodall) was taken at Bankstown in  October 1963
                                  while the bottom photograph by Brian Baker was taken exactly one year earlier at the same locale.
                                  Anyway, VH-AQU was later purchased by the original manufacturer, now named Hawker de
                                  Havilland, re-registered VH-DHX and returned to the place of its birth at Bankstown in 1986. It
                                  was acquired in the new millennium by the Norman Aeroplane Trust (Torquil Norman) at Chilbolton
                                  in the U.K .in whose care it is still airworthy.  It is currently registered G-ECAN.  There are many
                                  lovely shots of it as it now appears in full Railway Air Services livery on the Internet.  Merely Google
                                  "G-ECAN Dragon".