A new FK96 walkaround has been posted to www.ammsbrisbane.com/reference/FK96_2.html.
This surviving gun is in a park in Warwick, Southern Queensland.
The gun's breech block is missing and the wheels are a crude emulation of the original wheels. The condition of the gun isn't good with large patches of rust and peeling paint.
The images were taken by Dave Scorer, a WW1 modeler of note (at least in our part of the world).
Thanks mate - another great link worth keeping handy.
IMHO, these historically important guns really deserve to be housed undercover, maintained and kept well away from the plethora of individuals prepared to deface and vandalise them.
Just a few days ago here in Melbourne, some cretin defaced the 'Weary' Dunlop statue and the Mildura RSL are having a running battle with vandals who regularly desecrate their WW1 memorial.
I agree that the historic guns should be under cover - the restored 15cm sFH Lang howitzer at Wandoan has it's own roof. In Queensland the sunshine is the major destroyer of paints - a lot of the restored guns have 2-pack coatings to try to extend the time between refurbishments.
As far as protecting the guns and memorials against the scum isn't too much of a problem in Qld. People tend to be more conservative up here and the schools make a real point to educate the kids about the meaning of the memorials. As an example a few years ago a couple of drunk backpackers were picked up in central Brisbane after extinguishing the eternal flame in the central Brisbane war memorial - the magistrate was going to send them for "re-education" for a few weeks with the bad boys before their embassies paid their fines ($2500 from memory) and got them out of the country.
I've got another couple of really nice FK 96 n.A s to get to as well as an lMW mortar with original wheels - will take a while though it's hard to get good images in summer because the sunshine is so bright.
I've got a page at www.ammsbrisbane.com/events.htm - click the "AMMS Documentation Project" - it has a list of the guns, etc we know about in Queensland with links to walkarounds (where we have them). Some of these are in places so remote it's going to be hard to get walkarounds for them.
Regards,
Charlie
-- Edited by CharlieC on Tuesday 8th of December 2009 11:28:39 AM
-- Edited by CharlieC on Tuesday 8th of December 2009 11:47:42 AM
