RANDOM PICKS: Mar. 2006 - A 4.7 inch naval gun and roadside relics just north of Cowra, NSW - Graeme Andrews.

3419. One never knows what kind of old military gear you are going to find out in the sticks - and, let's face it men, Cowra NSW IS out in the sticks.

 

You can tell that by the Bugs Bunny sign on the fire engine sitting on top of a shipping container right out by the road. Also the stripped out old 4.7 inch naval gun; the old railway signal by the Caravan Park entrance, and what looks like a U.S. Sherman or a Matilda tank perhaps on the opposite mound.

 

As one of the hack magazines of the 1950s used to say 'That's Australia All Over ...'

 

Cowra, in fact, is 310 kms west of Sydney, in central NSW on the Lachlan River. It is, of course, genuinely famous as the scene of one of the two bloodiest events on Australia soil during WWII, or at any other time in fact. This was the mass breakout by hundreds of Japanese prisoners from their section of the huge Cowra prisoner of war camp there on August 5, 1944 - the 'Cowra Breakout' in which 231 Japanese PoWs and four Australian guards were killed, and almost 200 other Japanese PoWs were wounded. As an Australian mainland event, the death toll at Cowra is eclipsed only by the first bombing of Darwin on Feb. 19, 1942.

 

With a population of just under 13,000, Cowra is now the site of a Japanese War memorial, on land ceded to Japan in 1963, and a Japanese memorial garden designed by the world renowned Japanese garden designer Ken Nakajima (1914–2000). The first stage opened in 1979, and a second stage in 1986.

 

As a result of this history and its memorials, Cowra hosts many Japanese and Australian visitors.

 

Maritime writer and Photostream contributor Graeme Andrews was driving through in 2006 when this rather run-down looking collection of roadside military memorabilia caught his eye. Graeme says: 'The 4.7 in gun and the Limbo [next pic] were by the side of the road, along with TWO 4.5 inch gun turrets, a few kms northward from Cowra, outside some sort of combined caravan park and historical junk yard, which also contained rail cars and other bric a brac.

 

'I tried to interest the new RAN Museum on Garden Island, but the Supply officer in charge didn't seem to get the idea. The 4.7 looked just right to me - although many bits were missing. I trained on them at FND, HMAS Cerberus, but they had gun shields. When I last went past about 18 months back, neither the mortar nor the mount were there.'

 

Meantime, we've been trying to work out which ship the 4.7 inch gun may have come from, if indeed it had been ship-mounted and not from naval stores. The RAN ships that carried 4.7 inch guns were the Scott Class flotilla leader HMAS Stuart [I]; the seaplane carrier HMAS Albatross; and the three Tribal Class destroyers, Arunta, Warramunga and Bataan, and the five Q Class destroyers, Quality, Quickmatch, Quiberon, Queenborough and Quadrant. Beyon that, we can't decide.

 

Whether or not the roadside display is still there, as far as we can ascertain from a webpage the 'Cowra Fun Museum,' boasting military and railway relics, is still in operation on the Grenfell Road north of the town. There is also a webpage for a Caravan City which refers to a barbecue area and museum relics on the Midwestern Highway.

 

Photo Graeme Keith Andrews, RAN 1955-1968, RANR 1980 - from a private disc with permission.

 

Done