Gnowangerup History

William was trained as a 2^nd Air Mechanic in Laverton Victoria and sent to Tetbury, Glostershire in the UK as part of the May 1917 Reinforcements 1^st Squadron. As William was very mechanically minded and he knew his way around an engine he took to his job well and as luck would have it he was given the opportunity to become a pilot instructor with the rank of Lieutenant in the 7^th Training Squadron with the Australian Flying Corps. While stationed in France when the weather was not conducive to flying William worked with the RAF (British) mechanics, men who were highly skilled and only to happy to teach anyone who showed an interest in engines and they encouraged William to become a very useful pilot. It is believed that William already knew how to fly when he joined up with the AIF after a holiday in Melbourne with one of his uncles and this is most likely the reason he then became a pilot and then went on to instructing.
William flew RE8’s but his main instructional aircraft was an AVRO 504 K. At one stage he was asked to collect a brand new aeroplane from the AVRO factory in Brooklands, this was the only brand spanking new aircraft he had flown in at that time. Brooklands was a racetrack and in the middle of the grounds they had an aerodrome. William was a keen pilot and amateur photographer and he took many photos over the Somme in 1917 and 1918. He must have been very anxious at the time to think that his brother Ric was somewhere below slogging it out in the mud.
William had taken photos from his plane before around the training aerodromes and throughout England and he organised an aerial photography set up in a very old and worn out aircraft by cutting a hole in the floor. The aircraft was not going to be a loss to the squadron should it not return (we are not sure what his superiors thought about William’s fate if that was to happen!). The idea was that William would fly over the Somme taking photos and when they had been developed the Royal Artillery zeroed in and a bombing barrage ensured against enemy artillery and positions. He would then return to see what the results had been, how close the barrage was to enemy lines and where the next one was needed. On the first day that William took off flying low over the Somme everybody waved on the second day they shot at him and whilst his plane was full of bullet holes he didn’t get hit nor did the propeller, controls or engine.
At the end of war William was looking forward to heading home but he was assigned a group of pilots that had not completed their training. William had arrived late to the war and he was a well thought of instructor so he stayed on for almost a year training pilots and allowing the British government a standing airforce ready for the next battle. His only injuries occurred at that late stage as he had an accident and ended up with both feet broken. The accident occurred as William was trying to remove one of his student’s planes from a boggy airstrip and it ‘crashed’ trying to take off. William recuperated on the ship home.
One of Williams well know students during his War instruction was Hudson Fysh who went on to establish QANTAS. In his retirement he often instructed Dr Hanarahan senior in the sitting room at ‘Owendale’.
In 1918 after returning from the war 70 ewes and 1 ram were purchased from the “Martinup” stud Mintaro, South Australia to start the “Yarrawee” stud. This stud owned by Gaze Bros was under the personal control of William Gaze and was registered in his name and continued on these lines until 1931 when the partnership was dissolved, each partner (Ric and Owen) taking an equal portion of the sheep. William retained the “Owendale” property and renamed his stud “Owendale”