Lost Armour in Australia.
Here's one for South-East Queensland types.
Back in the 1960s, there were lots of WW2-vintage vehicles still on the roads
I was just a lad growing up in Redcliffe, just north of brisbane and noted the folowing:
The M3 and Matilda parked opposite the Woody Point Ice works.
The turret-less Matilda fitted with a 'dozer blade that was the working bulldozer at the local council rubbish tip.
Several Oz-pattern "Bren" Carriers used as farm tractors in the nearby small farms.
Further afield?
The retied landing barges that ran across Pumicestone Passage to Bribie Island.
The M3 Tanks parked in the bush where the Mt. Gravatt "Garden City" shopping centre was built.
The scrapyard on the old road to the Gold Coast that featured several US 155mm M1 guns.
The ex-US military semi-trailer buses operated by the Hornibrook Highway Bus Comapny between Sandgate and Scarbotough.
More "topless" carriers in the hills near the site of the North Pine Dam.
Another one on a cattle property out on Cooper Creek, near Windorah.
The rarest of the rare: possibly the ONLY example of an Oz-built "Tracked truck", found in the scrub south of Brisbane. That one seems to have made it to a museum..
The old wrecking yard west of Toowoomba that contained the remains of a lot of WW2 aircraft; Anson, Wirraway, P-40 plus the aft section, including turret, from an Oz-built Lincoln bomber.
The Brisbane City Council operated a Scammel wrecker as a recovery vehicle for errant buses, trams and "sanitation" trucks.
Jeeps and Studebaker trucks were everywhere.
Having a Dad who was a WW2-vintage motor mechanic and familiar with a lot of this stuff, sort-of got me looking for these things.
All I ever owned were a few Airfix models of some of those vehicles.
Way back, I posted the pix of an LVT-4. It was used in the early 1970's to drill the test bore-holes for the replacement bridge joining Brighton to Redcliffe: bright yellow and with a drill rig attached to the tailgate. The short ride the operator granted me really made my day!. Last seen in a wrecking yard near Bald Hills. Is this the one now at the Armoured Museum?
