That's a cracking museum just outside of Cairns. I had a chance to get up there last year, a vey interesting and VERY big collection. Some pretty nifty souvenirs too...
I am hoping to get there next year hopefully the Jagdpanther will be on display.
Their Tiger 1 is there which they have done up and hope to get into a running example one day I watch their workshop Wednesday each week certainly allot of work goes into the restoration of these machines.
These blokes had to buy their Leopard from BELGIUM.
The Oz government ratbags gutted the phased-out Oz fleets and allocated them as park / other monuments to a first-in, first-served group.
The empty shells were delivered, then, apparently FILLED WITH CONCRETE to "render them innocuous", in accordance with some totally sociopathic UN treaty or some such.
In the same "spirit", when the old F-111 fleet was decommissioned, the aircraft were stripped for bits and the airframes BULLDOZED into a big trench, as proudly shown on national TV. There is a totally hollow shell of one as a pathetic "car-park guard", at Amberley in Queensland.
West Au ended up with 2 Leopards one is in Collie the other in Bunbury the latter has been welded shut as per requirements to display at the museum, of the Collie one not sure on the concrete slipper inside some knuckle dragger up there already smashed one of the drivers viewing prisms.
I remember seeing pictures of the F-111's getting bulldozed a crying shame Perth aero museum has a full cockpit escape module you can get just about into it, very good display, of Amberley air base my brother was stationed there for 8 years as a Ft Sgt engine fitter probably late 70's early 80's.
Pic of the Collie Leopard outside the RSL hall, it is now under cover you can just make out the left hand drivers prism is broken.
I am hoping to get there next year hopefully the Jagdpanther will be on display.
Their Tiger 1 is there which they have done up and hope to get into a running example one day I watch their workshop Wednesday each week certainly allot of work goes into the restoration of these machines.
The Tiger 1 they have isn't a real one from memory, it's a full size replica built for use in the film Fury.
Their wonderful Panther V however, is very much the real deal, and IIRC a Normandy campaign veteran......and was fully restored to full working and running condition by Nick and Phil at Bruce Crompton's workshop in East Anglia, and then shipped out to Aus a few years ago. They paid a VERY LARGE sum for it. The restoration was featured in the TV series Combat Dealers and showed Bruce finding the complete engine in a garage in the UK!
Just the thing for putting round holes in square heads.
This vid gives you a good insight in just how they went about restoring their Tiger 1 it however is not from the film Fury which if you ask me seeing 131 for about 30 seconds was a big disappointment but can understand it as its the only Tiger 1 running at this point in time.
Talking of North Qld..... The weather here has been stifling recently and the poms are sweating. I wrote in a forum post where the weather was the topic of discussion that they ain't lived until they've been based up in North Qld or NT over the summer for 6 months. Or in the monsoon areas. Great times for a 20 year old pom
Hope you are well Peter, I see on the news that you guys over there are getting a right roasting from that great yellow thing in the sky above us, 38C temps are unheard of for the Old Country.