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A bronze swivel gun in the Queensland Maritime Museum (QMM) collection could be all that survives of the HMS Rattlesnake, commissioned in 1846 to chart the shoals of the Barrier Reef and create the first detailed charts of the Papua and New Guinea coasts. Europe’s maritime exploration of Australia effectively began in 1606 when the …

Continue reading “The Jardine gun”

First published in 2014 by Dell Dallach, this image (above) notionally depicts her uncle William Holland in Rockhampton’s Victoria Park. Taken some time between 1938 and 1960, it also features – in the background – one of the three large-calibre German guns gifted to the city in 1922 by the Queensland War Trophies Committee.

The Battle of Amiens which began on 8 August 1918 in north-western France is considered the greatest allied victory of the First World War, an action that ultimately led to Germany’s surrender three months later. British, Australian and Canadian ground forces advanced over 11 kilometres on that first day (one of the greatest advances of …

Continue reading “Souvenir of a souvenir”

When in 1921 the Queensland War Trophy Committee (QWTC) ruled that Boonah was ineligible to receive a captured field gun, the town’s citizenry resolved to try and independently secure one of these trophies by whatever means.

In a locked cabinet within a darkened storeroom, deep within the Queensland Museum there is a well worn Mauser M96 rifle with the name ‘P J A Heiberg’ crudely carved into its wooden stock. On the other side of the world, in a small-town cemetery in regional South Africa, there’s a nondescript grave marker similarly …

Continue reading “Best Forgotton”