Its mission is to collect and preserve all aspects of aviation heritage with an emphasis on Australia and Queensland and to display these for the enrichment of the public.

On 2 June 1974 the Queensland Air Museum was inaugurated with the official unveiling of a Canberra bomber (A84-225) that had been purchased from a Government disposal.

The aircraft was moved by volunteers from RAAF Base Amberley to be displayed at the Pioneer Valley Park, which was a museum at Kuraby in Brisbane's southern suburbs.

The collection began to grow when a Meteor TT20 was donated to the museum by the British Government and a Vampire and two Sea Venoms were acquired.

Now with a permanent home, the collection continued to grow and in 1989 it was bolstered by an ambitious recovery expedition to Sentosa Island, Singapore where a Sea Vixen, Meteor and Hunter were purchased from a scrap metal dealer just days before their destruction.

In September 2006, Mr Allan Vial, DFC OAM OPR (Pol), become the Patron of the Queensland Air Museum, he is also Life President of the Pathfinder Force Association in Australia.

But on 2 September 2010 the Queensland Premier Anna Bligh announced in Parliament that the airport would continue to operate on its present site and she said this would provide "certainty for the iconic air museum".

The redevelopment brief takes into consideration the provision of expanded safe, climate-controlled facilities to cater for the collection, the volunteer workforce and the 25,000 visitors who come through the museum each year.

The Wirraway was essentially a license built North American NA-16 which was simplified to suit Australian industrial capacity & capabilities of the time, and manufactured between 1939 and 1946.

Deliveries to the RAAF began just months before the outbreak of World War II and they served in New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Borneo areas against the Japanese in tactical reconnaissance, target marking, dive bombing and army co-operation roles.

The turbojet collection has some early centrifugal compressor designs such as the de Havilland Goblin and Ghost and the Rolls-Royce Nene and Derwent.

The turboprop engines are represented by the Rolls-Royce Dart, Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 and Armstrong Siddeley Double Mamba.

An important part of the development of the remote Australian inland area has been the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), which provides medical support to isolated communities.

The Australian Inland Mission Aerial Medical Service, which would later become the RFDS, was established by Reverend John Flynn on 15 May 1928 in Cloncurry, Queensland.

He engaged Alfred Traeger to develop suitable two-way radios which used a pedal generator to provide reliable power[6] and the service took flight using a de Havilland DH-50 aircraft leased from Qantas which is another Queensland icon.

The aircraft to be known as the Calair CA21 Skyfox was a two-seat high-wing monoplane with a tail wheel undercarriage for use in the training and recreational flying market.

A number of changes were made to the Kitfox design to increase the loaded weight, which brought it up to the Australian CAO 101-55 standard.

The final stage in the development of the Skyfox was the production of a model with tricycle landing gear to better cater for the pilot training market.

During World War II the British Bomber Command was engaged in night time area bombing of Germany.

In an effort to improve the accuracy the Pathfinder Force was created on 15 August 1942, under the leadership of Acting Group Captain Don Bennett, who was born in Toowoomba.

ISBN 0-646-45107-3 Cameron, Don G. Thirty Years On...Queensland Air Museum Major Collections Supplementary Material January 2005 to date.