Locals wanted an event to bolster the struggling north-west Victorian community. Not content with any old festival, they created an aviation extravaganza.

Nhill's population is about 2000, but up to 5000 people and 200 planes are expected at Nhill Airshow on October 10, with the highlight being the RAAF Roulettes aerobatic team.

The event marks 75 years since the RAAF opened a WWII training base in a paddock 3km north of town that is now Nhill Aerodrome.

Between 1941 to 1946, more than 10,000 people lived and worked there, from young men training as navigators, bombers and gunners to mechanics, cooks, doctors, cleaners and drivers.

One of the airshow organisers, local pilot Andrew Kube​, says headline acts will include aerobatics from a Pitts Special biplane.

There will be fly-pasts from a Vietnam War era Trojan T-28 fighter bomber, and World War II planes the Tiger Moth, Kittyhawk, Mustang, Wirraway, Boomerang and DC-3. There will be joy flights, food stalls, and helicopter rides.

Nhill elders Merv Schneider​, 90, and Max Carland​, 91, will tell how the base inspired them to join the RAAF and fight the Japanese in the south Pacific.

Mr Schneider, then 15, remembers jaws dropping one day in 1939 when five Hawker Demon and two Avro Anson planes landed at the first aerodrome near Nhill High School. Despite being a prefect, he led "the whole bloody school" out to check them out.

He later delivered fuel to the new RAAF base, and at 16, did a junior aviator course, mixing with air crews and begging lifts on planes. Later as a trainee RAAF navigator, he survived a De Havilland Rapide crash in bad weather at Creswick.

In 1944 and 1945 Mr Schneider flew as a radio navigator in B-24 Liberators, flying up to 14 hours from Exmouth in north-western Australia to bomb Japanese power stations and bases in Sumatra, Java and Borneo.

Mr Carland remembers that at Nhill, Hudson bombers "used to take off over the town about three o'clock in the morning", but the excitement of the base led to many local boys enlisting.

From just 18 years old, Mr Carland was a fighter pilot over New Guinea and Borneo from 1943 to 1945, strafing enemy ships and military installations and being shot-at from below.

One day over an island off New Guinea Mr Carland's plane was hit by a Japanese shell. It exploded behind his seat.

Airshow proceeds will fund Nhill Aviation Heritage Centre volunteers' restoration of an Avro Anson found on a farm six years ago.

Mr Carland said an air show "brings the whole thing into the public view – what they achieved here during the war. And it brings people, it's good for business in the town".