| September | ||
| Thursday 29th | Depart LHR 11:30 (main party) | SQ317 |
| Friday 30th | Arrive BNE 19:30 | SQ245 |
| Colmslie Hotel, Wynnum Road, Morningside QLD 4170 | +61 7 3399 8222 | |
| October | ||
| Saturday 1st | Acclimatisation | |
| Sunday 2nd | Acclimatisation | |
| Monday 3rd | Acclimatisation | |
| Tuesday 4th | Acclimatisation | |
| Wednesday 5th | Practice (Belmont) | 3, 5, 600x |
| Thursday 6th | Practice | 8, 9, 1000x |
| Friday 7th | R&R | |
| Saturday 8th | Teams match (teams of 6) NRAA Presidents Match (Grand) | 3, 500x |
| Sunday 9th | NRAA Presidents Match | 6, 8, 9, 1000x |
| Monday 10th | Australia Match practice | 3, 6, 9, 1000x |
| Tuesday 11th | AUSTRALIA MATCH | 3, 6, 9, 1000x |
| Wednesday 12th | NRAA Queens Prize | 3, 5, 600x |
| Thursday 13th | NRAA Queens Prize | 6, 8, 900x |
| Friday 14th | NRAA Queens Prize NRAA Royal Kaltenberg Cup Grand Agg concludes |
9, 10, 1000x |
| Saturday 15th | World Veterans & U25 matches | |
| Sunday 16th | World Individual practice / range 1 | 8, 9, 10, 800x |
| Monday 17th | World Individual | 9, 10, 800x |
| Tuesday 18th | World Individual | 9, 10, 800x |
| Wednesday 19th | World Individual & Final 10 | 9, 10, 1000x |
| Thursday 20th | Palma Match practice | 8, 9, 1000x |
| Friday 21st | PALMA MATCH - Day 1 | 8, 9, 1000x |
| Saturday 22nd | PALMA MATCH - Day 2 | 8, 9, 1000x |
| Sunday 23rd | R&R (Rugby World Cup Final) | |
| Monday 24th | Leave BNE 14:40 | SQ236 |
| Tuesday 25th | Arrive LHR 05:55 | SQ322 |
To captain one’s country is a great honour. To do so in a World Championship is the highest honour, and a huge responsibility to ensure that the national team represents the country to the best of its ability and at a level that reflects well on the standards of marksmanship at home. I am therefore very grateful to the National Rifle Association of Great Britain for affording me this privilege and for their confidence in me to deliver on this task.
I have had considerable help in seeking to achieve this objective. Martin Townsend, the team’s Vice Captain, has been a tower of strength, bringing the ‘been there, done that’ experience from the 2007 GB Palma that has helped this team continue to grow and build on prior successes. The indefatigable James Watson, the team’s Adjutant, knows my foibles having worked with me on two previous tours, and has kept me ‘on point’. On behalf of the whole team I would like to thank them for their commitment.
My gratitude is also due to the various organisations that have supported this team in various ways through donations, corporate days and advertising in our brochure. Please support our advertisers in return and thereby reward them. A list of supporters appears elsewhere; I thank them and any others whose names have not been included in print.
Thank you, too, to every member of the team, each of whom has individually stepped up to help out and get certain things done, always in a no-nonsense, effective way. It’s clear that each team member has come to place enormous value on his/her place in a GB Palma Team. Much credit for this goes to those members of the original squad who were not lucky enough to make this final team. They pushed hard for a place and, in so doing, have made the selected team all the better. I told all squad members at the start of the process that their goal was to do as well as they could and thereby make my task impossible. They did just that, and I am grateful to each and every one of them.
This is an experienced GB team by any standard. Each of us has toured with GB before but, for those for whom it is a first Palma team, I offer my congratulations. For those for whom it is a first tour to Australia, I can only say that you are in for a treat. I am biased but Australia will always hold a special place in my heart. My maternal grandfather was born in Toowoomba QLD, where his father was Station Master and helped save many stranded individuals in the floods of the early 1890’s - yes, like last year, it flooded back then too, and in those days the rescue and clean-up operations did not have the benefit of modern technology. My own formative years have memorable Australian influences, jackarooing in the Mallee in NW Victoria in 1975, and playing in Oxford front rows in the early 1980s with Bill Ross, Queensland Red and Wallaby international, and Tony Abbott, now leader of the Opposition in Australia.
But rifle tours to Australia are special - this will be my third, after visiting Tasmania and South Australia in 1997, including the notoriously windy Pontville range, then Perth in 2001 and the magnificently scenic Swanbourne Range. Why is this? Well the Australia Match – one of the great historic rifle matches – has something to do with it, but there’s more: the banter, the camaraderie, the rivalry, the history and, above all perhaps, the welcome. To the uninitiated and unsuspecting, this can take a surprising form. So if someone addresses you with a term that indicates that your parents weren’t married, don’t immediately assume that it’s an insult because, as likely as not, it’s a term of affection – unless of course you have just beaten him in a competition! And if you think you hear the locals liberally using the French term for ‘apple’ in conversation, they are actually referring to you, as the term “Pommy” or “Pom” denotes a person of British origin. This is not normally a derogatory term, unless accompanied by the adjective “whingeing” in which case the best strategy is not to whinge! Irrespective of the lingo, you can expect a warmth and sincerity that is deep and genuine, and is perhaps special to riflemen because, as amateurs, our rivalry is accompanied by friendships born of a common interest.
The reference to amateur status reminds us all that while we seek “professional” standards in what we do, marksmanship does not come cheap in terms of time and personal commitments, and we owe a huge debt to spouses, partners, family members and employers for indulging us in our pursuit of excellence on the range. I hope that they and all readers will follow our progress throughout the tour and the World Championships by logging onto our website.
National Rifle Association of Australia Limited
ABN 91 373 541 259
PO Box 414, Carina, QLD, 4152
Tel: 07 3398 1228; Fax: 07 3398 3515
Email: [email protected]
It is with sincere and warm wishes we welcome the Great Britain Rifle Team to Australia this year to compete in the World Long Range Championships at Belmont Shooting Complex in Queensland.
Competition between our two nations has always been fierce since the first Australian Team ventured to the UK to shoot in the Imperial Meeting at Wimbledon in 1886. We expect nothing less on this occasion.
The conduct of the "Australia Match" and the "Palma" Teams during the World Championships, the two most prestigious full-bore shooting team events for many in our sport, will bring out that fierce competitive spirit between our nations once again. With it however also brings to the fore with that competitiveness the wonderful friendship and camaraderie that exists between both our countries. I suppose it can only be compared with cricket when we are competing for "The Ashes" (and perhaps less said about that at the moment the better).
To John Webster and his team, we embrace you once again in representing Great Britain and look forward as we always do to welcoming new and old friends on the first occasion that these championships have been held in Australia.
May you return home with fond memories and maybe a few spoils of achievement during your stay with us.
The Palma Match, or World Championship of Long Range Rifle Shooting, is the most prestigious team event in our sport. With individuals trialling and teams training for years in order to compete, it is small wonder that a Palma badge from a competitive nation, let alone a medal, is a highly sought after item. Shooters have competed to earn this honour since September 1876, when the Great Centennial Rifle Match was held on Creedmoor rifle range in New York State, more recently the site of a major psychiatric hospital.
That first Palma Match was contested by Australia, Canada, Ireland, Scotland and the United States of America on a 36 inch bullseye, with the home nation beating Ireland into second by 22 points. With no sighting shots and with firers both prone and supine, it had much in common with the Elcho Match; but the .44 cal, 520gr projectiles were rather larger than we’re used to! Since then, there have been a further 27 Palma Matches, which have been contested by shooters from 30 different countries, including some not normally associated these days with rifle shooting, such as Peru and Cuba (runners-up in 1928). The USA dominated the early years, winning seven out of the first eight matches held from 1876 until 1928, with Canada taking the top slot in 1901. 1877 saw the first appearance by Great Britain, who had not taken up the previous year’s invitation quickly enough. They lost to the USA, before a 24 year gap ensued as the 1878 invitation was unanswered.
By 1901 at Sea Girt, the match had progressed from black powder to bolt action rifles with .30 cal and .303 jacketed bullets. Canada won and took the match outside the USA for the first time, to Rockville the following year. There, Great Britain’s win allowed them to hold the match at Bisley for the first time in 1903 which, though ‘won’ by the USA, was declared void rather than claimed by them or runners-up Great Britain after a deviation from service rifle specification. 1913 brought the first match at Camp Perry, where Argentina took second place with 7.65 Mausers, but the Great War interrupted the series until 1924 (an ‘unofficial’ match along with 1923 and 1925), when Connaught Ranges first played host. A 20” V bull was introduced in the 1920s but, soon after, there was a 38 year gap between matches. The Great Depression and Second World War are likely to have been factors; but the hiatus also coincided with the disappearance of the original Palma Trophy - a 7½ foot tall Tiffany creation with a copper spread eagle and silver laurel wreath atop a panel, mounted on an ornate steel shaft, bearing the word “PALMA”, which had been outside the office of the Secretary of War in the 1930s. It had been presented “in the name of the United States of America to the riflemen of the world”, for which reason an official Palma Match must feature the USA among the competing nations.
Before the reinstatement of the match series proper, a ‘preliminary’ match was held at Camp Perry in 1966 between Canada and the USA, with the hosts taking the honours and Canada turning the tables at Connaught the following year with GB also in attendance. The modern era of Palma had begun, comprising yearly matches until 1974, with the home team winning all but once - no doubt aided by the use of host country issued rifles and ammunition. The last of the annual matches was the first held south of the Equator, when South Africa triumphed at Bloemfontein, much as they did 25 years later.
From the Bicentennial Match (1976) onwards, the Palma moved to a three year and then a four year cycle, encompassing a wider range of venues including New Zealand and Australia, where we return in 2011 to complete a full rotation through all the hosting countries – the last match in Australia was for its own 200th anniversary in 1988 at the Malabar Range in Sydney, which lacked a 900m distance so 800m was fired twice. Since 1985, the team size has been standardised at 16, while 1995 heralded the two day course of fire. The 1992 iteration saw the introduction of the World Individual Long Range Rifle Championship; yet that was the year that Great Britain made use of revolutionary practices on the team front that yielded a first victory since 1970.
While that provided a foundation for three further GB wins in the past four matches, team shooting has since developed strongly across the globe such that this year’s Palma Match, contested by Australia, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA, promises to be a fiercely competitive affair. All of those countries are former winners except New Zealand, who had the remarkable record of having finished in third place four times in succession - each time behind a different one of the others and GB - until they missed the 2003 match. The Palma Match record of 14200 will not be broken this year because of the change to ICFRA targets and a maximum score of 7200 but, if conditions permit, the teams will all be striving to break “200 off”.
To date, the Palma Match has ‘officially’ been hosted by:
USA 11 times, Canada 8 times, GB 4 times, South Africa and New Zealand twice and Australia once.
Cumulative standings in terms of wins (including the ‘preliminary’ match but excluding the match declared void and the four ‘unofficial’ matches – two of them with only the USA shooting) are:
USA 13 (in 28 attempts), GB 6 (in 18), Canada 4 (in 27), South Africa 2 (in 7), Australia 2 (in 14).
Other countries, continents and provinces to have competed are:
Argentina, Channel Islands, Cuba, East & Central Africa, Europe (CPC), France, Germany/West Germany, Ireland, Jersey, Kenya, Namibia, Natal, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Scotland, Sweden, Zimbabwe/Rhodesia.
Australia's first marksmen were convicts and marines who landed at Sydney Cove with the First Fleet in 1788. The Commandant of Norfolk Island ordered his free male settlers (all six of them) to practise musketry on Saturdays. During the famine year of 1790, Governor Phillip selected the best marksmen from both the marine guards and the convicts and organised them into hunting parties. Weapons were strictly controlled in the colony but he appointed convict John McIntyre as the official hunter for the settlement and McIntyre and others were granted a licence to carry firearms - originally the 'Brown Bess' Rifle Short Land Pattern Musket which had a 42" barrel and a range of 100 - 200 yards. The marksmen kept the colony supplied with fresh meat from kangaroos and emus until a relief ship arrived. Thus began a long tradition of partnership between military and civilian rifle shooting in Australia.
Exhibition shooting contests were conducted by free German settlers in South Australia as early as 1840. Organised club shooting began in 1842 with the formation of the Sydney Rifle Club in New South Wales. In 1854, when England sent troops to war against Russia in the Crimea, colonists grew apprehensive that British regular troops would be withdrawn from Australia. Later that year, authorisation was given for the establishment of volunteer corps in some colonies. Informal rifle clubs also formed around this time.
By early 1860, most suburbs and towns in Australia supported a volunteer unit, usually a rifle corps. Documents in the Australian War Memorial archives dated 17 October 1863 include an informal group photograph taken during a rifle shooting competition between men of the Hobart Town Volunteers Artillery and the First Rifles. The men are all holding pattern 1853 .577 inch Enfield rifles. Volunteer forces were eventually replaced by Militia as British regiments were withdrawn.
State and Territory Rifle Associations were formed around this time:
The first Intercolonial Teams Match was fired on the Sandridge Range in Melbourne on 3 November 1862 and was won by New South Wales (who shipwrecked on the way home) from Victoria. In 1887 the inaugural Intercolonial Rifle Meeting was held in South Australia during the South Australian Exhibition. During this competition, military representatives from the colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia attended a meeting to begin formation of a central body to promote both intercolonial and international matches. The meeting reconvened on 15 February 1888 in Sydney between officers representing New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania and, after several days, resolved to form the Federal Council of Rifle Associations of Australasia (from 1901 the Commonwealth Council of Rifle Associations of Australia). The New Zealand Rifle Association accepted an invitation to join the Council, withdrawing some years later. After World War II, the Council evolved into the National Rifle Association of Australia (NRAA) and the first national Queen’s Prize Meeting was conducted in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory in 1972. Robert Richards-Mousley won at the McIntosh Rifle Range where it continued until moving to the Belmont Range, Queensland, in June 2004.
In the early years, iron targets were replaced with paper targets and the original Martini-Henry rifle was replaced with the MLE (Rifle, Magazine, Lee-Enfield). Targetry continued to evolve and scoring rings were reduced in size as ammunition and scores improved. The introduction of the sliding wind arm for the sight contributed to higher scores although it was highly contentious at the time. Financial assistance from Army funds and free ammunition, which had been made available to the States for prize meetings, was gradually withdrawn from 1959 and formal connections between the rifle shooting Associations and the Department of Defence began to diminish.
Various models of the .303 calibre SMLE (Rifle, Short, Magazine, Lee-Enfield) were in service for many years and the No 4 was widely popular. When the Army introduced the 7.62 mm SLR (Self Loading Rifle) in 1959 to replace the .303 rifle, the No 4 was modified until a new rifle could be approved. Omark of South Australia produced a solid action single shot rifle which was permitted by the Council and the Angel action was produced in New South Wales. Black Mountain barrels were made at the Lithgow Small Arms Factory in New South Wales and stainless steel barrels were produced by Maddco in Queensland and by Tobler in New South Wales.
The first Australian rifle team to compete overseas ranked 4th in the Centennial International Long Range Match, in 1876 at Creedmoor, USA. The event subsequently became known as the Palma Trophy Teams Match, which Australia has won twice - in 1979 at Trentham, New Zealand, and in 1988 at Malabar in Sydney, Australia. Australia were a strong third in the last match in 2007 at Connaught Ranges, Canada.
A team of united Australian Riflemen competed in the Rajah of Kolapore’s Imperial Challenge Cup on the Wimbledon Range, England, in 1886, coming 4th. The first Australian to win a Queen’s badge at Bisley was A. Carter in 1897. The first Australian team to compete at the Bisley Range in 1902 won the Kolapore and two members also won King’s badges. Lieutenant Walter Addison was the first Australian to win the coveted King’s Prize at Bisley in 1907, defeating 1470 of the best shots in the world.
The Empire Match was inaugurated by the Council in 1907 and was first won by Australia against teams from New Zealand and Great Britain at Randwick Range in New South Wales. The top scorer for Australia was A. Cutler, the father of a future Governor of NSW, Sir Roden Cutler. The Empire Match was renamed the Australia Match in honour of the Australian Bicentenary Full Bore Rifle Championships in 1988. It remains one of the world’s premier matches.
Shooting was first included in the modern Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens however it did not feature in the Commonwealth Games until 1966 in Jamaica. In 2006 in Melbourne, the Australian Commonwealth Games Shooting Team ranked third in all sports with 23 medals won, (9 Gold, 8 Silver, 6 Bronze). Brigadier Bruce Scott won a Gold medal for Australia in the Individual Full Bore Rifle Match and a Silver medal in the Pairs Match along with team-mate James Corbett, who also won individual Bronze and followed it with the Silver in Delhi in 2010.
Nearly three quarters of a century ago, a 14 man Great Britain Rifle Team visited Australia thirty years after the first Empire Match was shot there. The Australian leg of the tour was the central one of an extended voyage that took in first South Africa, then Australia for the Empire Games and finally New Zealand.
Touring was a markedly different proposition in those days. As Lord Cottesloe wrote at the time with great foresight, “journeys between the Mother Country and the distant parts of the Empire will by degrees become more rapid, and it may well be that in a perhaps rather distant future the undertaking of sending rifle teams overseas will become less formidable than it now is.” The first Great Britain tour to visit Australia, under the captaincy of Commander Swanston, “was absent from home for six months and circumnavigated the globe.” Key dates were:
| 16th October – 4th November 1937 | Sail from Liverpool to Cape Town |
| 12th November 1937 13th November 1937 17th November 1937 18th November 1937 20th November 1937 22nd November 1937 25th November 1937 27th November 1937 2nd December 1937 |
Match at Pretoria Match at Johannesburg Match at Durban Match at Chase Valley Match at Bloemfontein Test Match at Bloemfontein Match at East London Prize Meeting, Grahamstown Match at Cape Town |
| 5th – 22nd December 1937 | Sail from Cape Town to Fremantle |
| 24th December 1937 30th December 1937 7th January 1938 12th January 1938 23rd January 1938 29th January 1938 7th February 1938 14th – 15th February 1938 |
Match at Perth Match at Port Adelaide Match at Melbourne Match at Hobart Match at Brisbane Match at Newcastle NSWRA Prize Meeting, Sydney Empire Trophy Match, Sydney |
| 17th – 21st February 1938 | Sail from Sydney to Wellington |
| 24th February 1938 | Test Match at Wellington, New Zealand |
| 1st March – 5th April 1938 | Sail from Wellington to Southampton |
The Great Britain team travelled to Cape Town on T.S.S. ‘Ulysses’, the first of several voyages with no sea sickness experienced by any team member. In private letters home to new bride Patricia, the late Lt Col R.E.W. “Johnny” Johnson OBE TD wrote of deck games, fancy dress, scavenger hunts, reels and swimming and confided “I and my partner (an elderly married lady) got knocked out of the Deck Quoits doubles. Another dance this evening - there are always too many girls... As a perfect little gentleman I get practically no rest the whole evening.” Clearly “what goes on tour stays on tour” was not adhered to in those days.
On arrival in South Africa, the team enjoyed some sightseeing (including a gold mine tour), wine tasting, the Lord Mayor’s Ball and a long train journey through the Karoo, before beating Witwatersrand (narrowly), Pretoria United Services, Eastern Transvaal and Western Transvaal at Quaggapoort Range, Pretoria. The very next day they lost by 2 points to a Transvaal team at Booysens Range, Johannesburg, with the local wind coaches helping overturn a 17 point lunchtime deficit at the longer ranges. They watched a war dance, travelled by rail to Durban, dropping “1,100 feet in about fifteen minutes” and then lost to Natal in poor light at the Athlone Range, Durban, and again on countback the next day at the Natal Carbineers’ Range at Chase Valley.
After travelling to Bloemfontein, the Great Britain team beat the Orange Free State at the South African National Range at Hamilton by 1564 to 1538 in tricky wind with “a good mirage which could be well read up to 12 minutes(!), but with such quick variations that equally quick shooting was required to cope with them”, falling only one point short of the South African score against Rhodesia alongside. The team then took to the range for the Test Match without the (hospital) bed-ridden “Johnny”, who was diagnosed with enteric, for the first international match ever held on South African soil. The British scored least well at each of the short ranges (200, 500 and 600 yards), with loose screws (Hoddle) and a half closed aperture (Fulton!) contributing to a deficit of 19 points to South Africa and 30 points to Southern Rhodesia. Better performances at the longer ranges saw the gap to the latter narrow somewhat, but the South Africans shot strongly to win by 1601 points to Southern Rhodesia’s 1587 and Great Britain’s 1571.
The South African leg of the tour concluded with a 5 point defeat (hampered by a cross-shot) by Eastern Province at East London, a prize meeting at Grahamstown and a 2 point win over Western Province at Woltemade Range, with a ‘Country’ team also shooting in that match.
Australia
After travelling on the delayed S.S. ‘Ascanius’ from Cape Town to Durban for coaling, the British team continued on 8th December towards Fremantle in the good company of the South African athletics and bowls teams, and were met there two weeks later by Victoria Rifle Association Chairman, Sir Charles Merrett, who had travelled 2600 miles to act as a facilitator all the way until Melbourne.
Christmas Eve saw a 14-man match between Western Australia and the entire British team at the Swanbourne Range, Perth, with the visitors finding the 24 inch aiming mark at 500 yards uncomfortably large and finishing 24 points adrift.
On Christmas Day, the team enjoyed a car drive to Canning’s Weir and aeroplane flights in a six-seater Dragon Rapide before being made honorary members of the Weld Club and departing by train for Adelaide at 9pm – a journey that was punctuated by stops at places like Kalgoorlie and Port Pirie, where local rifle club members would greet the team at the stations.
Johnny struggled with some of the local customs: “Apparently dinner in this country runs from 6.00 or 6.30 to about 7.30 - a most queer business. The pubs in West Australia close at 9.00pm but they open at 9.00am and are open all day. Here in Adelaide they apparently close at 6.00pm having been open for 12 hours on end.”
The holidays meant no practice on arrival in Adelaide, so the team went to the races and were entertained by Senator and Mrs. Duncan Hughes, visiting the Spring Vale Wine Cellars, the Naval and Military Club and the Adelaide Club before finally shooting against South Australia at Port Adelaide on 30th December. In largely easy wind, Great Britain ran out winners by 2622 to 2579 before travelling to Mildura for the New Year’s weekend.
As well as various receptions, the team enjoyed a day at the Melbourne Cricket Ground with the Victoria Rifle Association, watching Don Bradman batting until he was caught in the slips off Gregory, making 35 for South Australia against Victoria.
The most useful part of this leg of the tour was the defeat on 7th January by 32 and 6 points respectively to the Victoria Metropolitan and Victoria Country teams – useful because of the team’s observation and later adoption of the anti-fouling practices of the locals. Col. Bodley would later attribute the South Africans’ weak performance at the last range of each day of the Empire Match to a failure to follow the same policy.
Another match for all 14 firers followed against Tasmania at the Sandy Bay Range on 12th January. The British team found that few of the rifles would take a .303” gauge after use and resolved to use anti-nickel preparations in future firings, after losing to Tasmania by 1932 to 1947.
A 700 mile charabanc (coach) trip from Melbourne to Sydney via Canberra followed, with most of the views hidden in mist or rain while the luggage was soaked. The team then shot against Queensland ‘A’ and ’B’, successfully employing some of the dozen reserve rifles lent to them by BSA but finishing between the two local teams in a match at 300, 600, 700 and 900 yards. Queensland’s second string won, before showing the visitors to various beach resorts the following day. There was a scare when a few team members were caught, while swimming, by the “fearful current and undertow. It was quite an exciting five minutes. Two very strong swimmers went out with lines attached to their backs and just hauled them in. Garnett, Fulton and Seward and two strange young women were all rescued.”
On 28th January, the team travelled from Brisbane to Newcastle accompanied by the New Zealand team, which had now arrived in Australia for the Empire Games, under Captain W. N. Masefield. Both teams were shown around the BHP steelworks and given a reception by the Mayor in the Town Hall, where “the Mayor was quite the worst speaker I have ever heard and that is saying a good deal after all the speeches we’ve had in this country. There was a dinner at 7.00pm at which there were 19 speeches and ‘for he’s a jolly good fellow’ was sung six times. This constitutes a record for this team as we’ve never had more than 10 speeches before and we all hope we shall never have so many again” (Johnny’s words, not Swanston’s!). There followed a match for teams of ten, firing 2 sighters and 10 to count at 500 and 600 yards against New South Wales, Hunter River District and Macleay District. Great Britain won the match with 940 points and New Zealand were fourth on 902.
Both teams proceeded to the ANZAC range at Liverpool, near Sydney, to shoot in the 72nd New South Wales meeting in celebration of Australia’s 150th anniversary. In a meeting with 1600 competitors, the British individual highlight was L. E. Hoddle’s victory in the first stage of the King’s Prize.
The match for the Empire Trophy (given by Australia in 1907) was shot over two days on the 14th and 15th February, the first day at 300, 500 and 600 yards and the second at 800, 900 and 1000 yards. The whole team shot SMLEs, although Hoddle chose a P14 at the short ranges and Garnett did so at 300 and 500 yards – each team was restricted to the use of its Government issued rifles of the time, of which the GB team took 63 on tour!
In light winds from 9:30 to 10 o’clock, on a cool day with “good grey light”, Great Britain dropped 29 points (out of 400) at 300 yards, to stand last of the four competing countries, 6 points behind Australia in first. A better 500 yards left Britain still trailing, 1 behind New Zealand and 11 behind Australia; but a range-leading 378 (despite a 43) at 600 yards brought the British team up into second place on 1126, 2 behind Australia but 5 ahead of South Africa and 7 in front of New Zealand. Greig and Hoddle were joint top scorers on the range, along with Baxter of South Africa, on 146.
In similar conditions on day two, Great Britain again led the others on 389 to move into a 5 point lead over Australia after 800 yards. The following range saw, with the exception of South Africa, some very close scoring with New Zealand and Great Britain making 376 to Australia’s 375, leaving the Aussies 6 and Kiwis 13 points behind the British team with only 1000 yards to come.
“Only” 1000 yards indeed! Seward and Widdrington both missed with their sighters, but the latter recovered so well that he scored 50. Benefiting from several months of team shooting together, Great Britain dramatically outshot the other countries at the longest range, scoring 369 to Australia’s 352, New Zealand’s 348 and South Africa’s 343 to make them the only team to score more highly over the long ranges than the short. Britain’s advantage lay not so much in the highest scores on each team, which were broadly similar, but in the smaller spread of scores, with only 10 points separating the best and worst performers (half the equivalent gap within the third and fourth placed teams) and only three points separating the top six firers. Final scores:
| Team | 300x | 500x | 600x | 800x | 900x | 100x | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Great Britain | 371 | 377 | 378 | 389 | 376 | 369 | 2260 |
| 2 | Australia | 377 | 382 | 369 | 382 | 375 | 352 | 2237 |
| 3 | New Zealand | 376 | 373 | 372 | 381 | 376 | 348 | 2226 |
| 4 | South Africa | 374 | 382 | 363 | 388 | 358 | 343 | 2208 |
Johnny was, as usual, the last of the team to fire and had on purpose gone down to shoot without knowing the state of the score. “I’d had enough of knowing when the match depended on my last shot in South Africa. On I went again by myself and when I still had two shots to fire I heard some muttering behind and said to Jimmy ‘from what I hear behind I don’t think I need to fire these two’. His reply was ‘shut up and go on - don’t take any notice’ at which we both laughed”. Johnny finished at 1000 yards with four bulls in a row; the team would still have won had he missed with all four shots. Thus the Empire Match was won with a record score.
The keen observer of team shooting in recent years will have noted that the 2007 Palma and subsequent Great Britain teams have adopted the practice of having firers get down on either side of the coach, such that each is ready the moment the previous firer has finished, with the coach remaining in position and coaching half the firers (unless left-handers) from what had previously been thought of as the “wrong” side. This practice has trickled down to some of the county and most of the National teams, and stemmed from an innovation implemented successfully by the County of London team a few years earlier… or at least London had believed it was original thinking! Swanston’s account of the 1938 Empire Match suggests that he was over 60 years ahead of his time: “In order to keep within the time limits and to facilitate coaching, the person next to fire took up his position on the other side of his coach from that occupied by the firer some four or five shots before his predecessor had finished. There was, therefore, no break in the continuity of firing – No. 2 starting immediately No. 1 had finished, and so on throughout.” While the coaches were not in the habit of winding the sights for the firers in those days and Swanston concedes of the wind readers that “we did not collaborate as a general rule”, it nonetheless goes to prove the veracity of Marie Antoinette’s words that there is nothing new except that which has been forgotten.
New Zealand was the final leg of the tour, reached aboard S.S. ‘Awatea’ alongside the New Zealand and South African teams. The Governor-General of New Zealand – Lord Galway – was returning in the ship from the Sydney celebrations and the three teams had the honour of being presented to him on board, before being welcomed at Parliament House (alongside the returning New Zealand athletes from the Empire Games) by Ministers acting on behalf of the Prime Minister.
Great Britain and South Africa both shot at the Wairapa Rifle Association meeting at Trentham, before shooting in a test match – Great Britain’s first in New Zealand. Conditions were difficult – a strong rear fishtail prevailing producing variations from 1 to 9 right - but it was the British elevations that failed to match earlier standards, particularly at 300 yards. With teams of 10 firing 2 convertible sighters (what do you mean you thought convertibility was an eighties innovation?) and 10 shots to count at 300, 600, 800 and 900 yards, Great Britain scored 1801 to South Africa’s 1831 and New Zealand’s 1803.
The team then disbanded, with most leaving for home on S.S. ‘Akaroa’ on March 1st, via the Panama Canal, and the remainder by independent arrangement across America. Commander Swanston concluded his report of the tour by stating that “it is desired to emphasize above all, the belief that it is important to send British teams to the Dominions at more frequent intervals than has been the case in the past.” I think we can safely say that greater touring frequency has latterly been achieved!
Great Britain’s top scorer in that match, Chris Hall, was one of the inspirations for this article. As President of the Oxford and Cambridge Rifle Association he was a strong supporter of student shooting and, during the planning of the Oxford & Cambridge tour to Canada in 1994, he had great tales to tell of the long, seagoing tours of his youth. This team had been away for nearly six months by the time the ‘Akaroa’ docked at Southamption on 5th April.
A final note on one of the other main changes between that tour and those of modern times: the current team expects its three week tour to cost in the region of £100,000 (c.A$160,000) in total. In 1937-38, the six month tour (funded by £100 5s. 11d. from the Overseas Teams fund, of which £24 10s. 4d. was returned, and £2791 6s.3d. in donations from third parties) spent:
£1,748 5s. on steamship fares;
£897 10s. 11d. on travel and hotels (no hotel costs at all in South Africa!);
£142 2s. on clothing;
£65. 13s. 5d. on rifle equipment, spoons etc; and
£13 10s. 6d. on sundries, for a grand total of:
£2,867 1s. 10d, or just over £200 (gross) a head for half a year’s touring!
Note: allowing for inflation, that amounts to about £10,000 a head. A lot, but not too bad for half a year’s touring!
Many thanks to Ted Molyneux and Tony de Launay for their assistance with content for this article, and to “Johnny’s” daughter for allowing Tony access to the letters from her father to her mother.