Australia and Lend-Lease

[Lang]

Mike

Paragraph 8(a) of the treaty says what happened to the American equipment left in Australia. We paid $6,500,000 for it and we now owned it.

In lieu of any specific American equipment sales records on your radar do you suppose that stuff was just sold off (or kept in storage as you indicated for lots of gear) along with the rest of the equipment? eg A sale of 100 jeeps in Townsville may have included 20 American jeeps with no differentiation?

The Australian jeeps would have been recorded and written off on the records which you have access to but the American jeep records could be as simple as a note in the sales report saying " Lot 34 Ford Jeep USA" or even just "Lot 34 Ford Jeep"?

A bit more info from that treaty stated not only would Australia still get all the gear they ordered that was on board ships at sea they would also get all their current back orders fulfilled by American contractors and this would be loaded on to ships by the Americans for Australia - who covered the cost of freight.

I believe this is probably where the big stocks of new equipment, not refurbished, (Studebakers, White Scout Cars? etc) stored at Bandiana, Singleton and other depots came from.

Lang