At age 24, the former Tenambit resident has winged his way to achieving a long-held ambition to become a pilot with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).

He will take up a posting with the 37 Squadron to fly C130H Hercules aircraft at the Richmond base next year, where he faces a stint in the Middle East.

Mr Croft’s graduation from 10 months of pilot training at the RAAF’s Pearce base in Western Australia on September 5 marked the realisation of a dream he had nursed since he was 12-years-old.

The Hunter Valley Grammar School foundation student undertook a 10-day flying potential and aptitude assessment at the Defence Force Basic Flying Training School at British Aerospace, Tamworth, while he was studying for his Higher School Certificate in 2002.

He completed a Bachelor of Science with Honours degree at the Australian Defence Force Academy before he began pilot training.

In between, he managed to find the time to get married.

“It is rewarding. It’s a big sense of achievement,” Mr Croft told the Mercury of achieving his wings.

“There were a lot of stages on the way through.”

Mr Croft’s parents also made the move to Western Australia when he relocated for pilot training.

But he will return to the eastern seaboard to be based at Richmond in April.

“I’ll have a six-month conversion to the Hercules and then probably a trip to the Middle East,” he said.

It was Mr Croft’s grandparents Max and Pauline Boughton, of Beresfield, who triggered his ambition.

They made the journey to Pearce to watch the graduation ceremony.

“We took him to an air show at the Williamtown RAAF base when he was 12 and he said then that this was what he wanted to do,” Mrs Boughton said.

Mr Boughton said he was “as proud as punch”.

“I actually had tears in my eyes when he graduated (from the Defence Force Academy) in Canberra,” he said.

“There aren’t many people who achieve what they set out to do.”