Announcing 'From Desert Sand to Jungle Mud'

[Mike Cecil]

Gents,

Some images appearing on other threads and the queries (and conjecture) about where the late Rod McPherson's original image collection ended up have prompted Keith Webb and I to post this thread on MLU.

For several years, we have been working towards a book on Australian military vehicles of the Second World War. Keith and I have, between us, managed to amass quite a collection of information and images, including most of the image collection of the late Rod McP, plus many other images from a wide variety of sources. We hope the result, when it is completed, will answer many questions on the topic, and provide readers with a veritable smorgasbord of Australian MV photographs, from staged studio-type shots to servicemen's 'snapshots'. We anticipate including more than 1,500 images in the book, all at a size to enable readers to view the details.

The book will be laid out in chapters covering each vehicle class or type, for example, chapter 3 is 'Cars, Passenger Utilities and Buses', Chapter 4 is '1/4 ton Trucks', and so on. There are currently 22 chapters and 2 appendices, covering everything from motorcycles to engineer plant and AFVs.

Each chapter will be structured along similar lines: an introductory text, followed by the images with detailed captions. The books contents cover all three services: Army (AIF & AMF), RAAF and RAN. In many cases, images of the same vehicle from several different angles will be presented.

Although we are well advanced with this project, we still have a way to go yet. Anyone with images of vehicles in service use that they consider might be good to include are welcome to contact us, and of course Keith will be available at Corowa, if you have them with you. We are looking for vintage images of vehicles, including images of Second World War vehicles still in service use in the post-war period.

We are hoping to have the book ready for the printers within the next 12 months if all goes according to our current plans. It is a very big undertaking, so bear with us as we bring it all together.

Mike Cecil and Keith Webb