Formula One racing personality Sir Jackie Stewart OBE recently played a central part in a name change for one of the district’s major amenities.

Local aviation pioneer Jim Hazelton — who taught Grand Prix star Stewart how to fly — is to be remembered with the naming of the entrance road to Orange Airport in his honour.

The Saturday, March 14, event is the culmination of a campaign that involved local aviator Wade Mahlo for formal recognition of Hazelton’s key role in, not just aviation in the region, but in moving the then-rudimentary facility from Bloomfield to Spring Hill more than half a century ago.

“It’s going to be named the ‘Jim Hazelton Drive’, which is nothing less than he deserves,” Mahlo told 'Orange City Life'. “His nephews Bill and Peter are coming for the occasion, one of the most significant in the facility’s history,” he added.

Jim, along with his brother Max — who ran the regionally-based Hazelton’s Airlines for 48 years — was a major advocate for air travel in country areas and was the first Australian to fly a single-engine aircraft solo across the Pacific Ocean.

Wade said that Australian flying icon Dick Smith and Stewart, the world driver champion whom Jim taught to fly light recreational craft in the 1960s, both played a part in lobbying for recognition of one of the key figures in the establishment of the airport.

“Council was looking to move the old aerodrome, that was at the time out at Jack Brabham Park at Bloomfield in the late 1950s; that’s why they’ve still got the wind sock out there,” Wade revealed.

“Jim played a major part in advocating for the move, seeing the importance that air travel would play in our future, with the vote locked at five-all, and the mayor breaking the deadlock.”

Nephew, Peter, added that his uncle played a central role in establishing the facility as a going concern, at a time when air travel was considered a niche activity in rural areas with trains and automobiles still the major form of transport.

“Jim built the first hangar at the airport that still stands right near the terminal, he was selling aircraft out of Orange as well,” Peter said. “As well as being the first business at Orange Airport, he made about 200 crossings of the Pacific bringing small planes, many single engine craft, all the way from America.”

Since those early days, it’s been up, up, and away for Orange, from a small airstrip, a few sheds, and rudimentary check-in building, to the current facilities and services that the region now enjoys.

“You can now catch flights to not only Sydney, but also to Melbourne, Brisbane, and any number of regional centres also,” Wade said.

“We’ll be having lunch afterwards at the Max Hazelton Centre at the airport, which now has over 100,000 passengers pass through it each year,” he concluded.