[Rod Diery]

Back about 1976, I was a young Craftsman posted to 1st Base Workshop Battalion at Bulimba in Brisbane. For about three months, the section I was in was tasked with rendering obsolete 25 pounder guns innocuous and then mounting them in parks and outside RSL clubs all over Queensland and northern New South Wales.

It was pretty good job, our target was about one gun per week. There were four of us in the crew, a Corporal and three Crafties. We would weld everything up in Brisbane except for the wheels, brakes and towing gear. We would rub the gun back and then respray it. Then we would hook the gun up to a International Mark 5 truck and tow it to where ever it was to be placed. We also took a workshop Landrover with a VW powered 350 amp welder on it.

The local RSL or Shire would have had to have prepared a mounting site for it. Sometimes the gun would be mounted on axle stands, sometimes it was mounted on it's traverse ring. We would use ramps, jacks and the truck winch to position the gun on it's mount. Then we would remove the wheels which were only use for towing bu us and fit a set of display wheels which were usually filled with sand. we used the Abbey crane on the truck for that.

Then we would fire up the welder and weld up the wheels, towing eyes, brakes and traverse ring if needed. Then we would youch up the gun paint and retire to the bar in the RSL where the grateful members would invariably ply us with enormous amounts of beer and tell many enormously entertaining war stories, the entertainment value of which were directly proportional to the amount of beer consumed by all concerned.

Then we would gingerly drive home the next day ready to do it all again.

Anyway this is one of the guns that I was involved in delivering although it has since been moved. It is at the Wondai RSL Club in Queensland