The Catalina | Davidpenglaseauthor

My grandpa steering the converted WWII Catalina flying boat during the 1956 Murray River flood — the image that sparked the novel.

The idea for The Catalina came from two places: this photograph of my grandpa during the 1956 Murray River flood, and my childhood memories of my brothers and me climbing through the discarded Catalina fuselage he’d cut away and left in our backyard.

Oddly, no one in our family thought his decision to convert a decommissioned WWII flying boat into a barge capable of carrying the red‑gum sleepers he and my dad cut during the flood was anything remarkable. It was simply something he did.

It wasn’t until a tutor in a creative writing course challenged me to recall something extraordinary an ordinary person in my life had done that I realised the story had been sitting with me all along. That moment—and this photograph—became the beginning of the novel.

The Catalina: From Flying Boat to River Barge

It's almost a story that's too incredible to believe... but here are the pictures of the historical facts The Catalina story is based on.

During the Second World War, the Royal Australian Air Force used Catalina flying boats for long‑range patrols, night bombing, mine‑laying, and search‑and‑rescue missions across the Pacific. Known for their endurance and reliability, Catalinas could stay airborne for more than twenty hours and operate from remote harbours where conventional aircraft couldn’t land.

Catalina-side-Barham-Boy-Scouts_edited.j

In 1950, the Scoutmaster of the Barham Boy Scouts bought a decommissioned Catalina hull from the Lake Boga Airbase. With its wings removed and all equipment stripped out, a wheel was welded to the nose, the tail was tied to the back of an old Bedford truck, and the fuselage was towed more than 60 kilometres along dirt and gravel roads to Barham. The Scouts later added wheels to each side of the hull to make moving it on land a little easier.

Six months later, the Scouts had fitted the Catalina hull with a small motor, internal steering at the cockpit, and retractable wheels for moving it on land. They launched it on the Murray as their floating Scout Hall, sailing it up and down the river on countless adventures for the next five years.

In 1956, during the peak of the Murray River flood, my grandpa bought the Catalina hull from the Barham Boy Scouts. With the Gunbower Forest closed to vehicles and sleeper cutters unable to work, he cut away most of the upper structure, reinforced the hull to carry loads of up to seventy red‑gum sleepers, and fitted it with a Hupmobile car engine and steering. The converted Catalina became his barge, allowing him and a crew of sleeper cutters to keep working despite the floodwaters.

My uncle Bervin using a swing saw to cut and shape red‑gum sleepers at the riverbank dump. My grandpa stands beside the converted Catalina barge, watching the work. The photograph was taken by my dad.

The Catalina wasn’t only a working barge during the 1956 flood—it also became a way for family and friends to enjoy the river while the water was still high. This photo, taken by my dad, shows a picnic outing with Grandpa on top at the steering column, my mother seated with her hand on the fuel drum, and Granny in the centre wearing her bright floral dress.

These photographs are the historical truths that sparked my novel—the WWII Catalina, the Scouts’ floating hall, the barge my Grandpa built during the flood of ’56, and the people who lived and worked along the Murray. The story I’ve written is historical fiction, it is not a story about my family, but it grows from these truths and explores what financial, physical, and emotional pressure might do to a family already stretched thin—the weight of wartime horrors, the love between a husband and wife tested by old wounds and present fears, the strain between a father and son, the tensions between friends shaped by secrets and new love, and the fragile ties within a small community as the worst flood in living memory closes in. At its heart is the risk and hope carried by one unlikely barge, built from the fuselage of a WWII Catalina seaplane.