Aussie mag box

[Kev G]

........I'm more familiar with the latter :-)
I expect it might have been the welding fumes that was his undoing regarding the typo !
Anyway it will be interesting if anyone can shed any light on the matter.

[Lithy]

Would this be the item being discussed?

[Peter Laidler]

Yep, that's the one! But the flock are interested to see/hear of an Oz made version.

On a purely practical note I would bet my last penny that there were Oz made versions. Can you just imagine the shipping/freight sending 10,000 boxes full of fresh air over to Oz through u-boat infested oceans. Nope....., nor can I!

[ZGB]

I agree about the point of sending mag boxes to oz, logic says the must have made them in oz but like I said before I have never seen one and would like to see some photos of some so I know what to look out for. I know that when all the bren and vickers stuff landed in the U.K. back in the early 90's from Oz there did not seem to be any 12 MAG Bren boxes. All the magazines were re-packed in different quantities from about 100 mags per wooden box to boxes that contained 500. There was also a nice stack of brand new tropic pack wooden boxes containing mags made by ELECTROLUX, but i digress.
Right about the welding fumes Kev!

[Lithy]

Whilst I cannot find a maker or ownership mark anywhere on the box, I assumed it was an Aussie box simply due to the fact it resides here in the land of Oz.

As stated earlier, it would be fairly pointless shipping a heap of boxes halfway around the globe when they could be knocked together without much effort or sophisticated tooling here.

Edit to add; found the number 796 below a tiny broad arrow on the carry handle.

[Scrivo18]

I will have a look at mine when I get a chance.. I have never counted the number.. always thought it was 10 mags actually... means i have more than i thought :-)

[ZGB]

Big thank you LITHY for the pics. Can you get a close up of the 796 number with the broad arrow at all?
SCRIVO18 I would appreciate if you could look on yours to see what markings the mag box has on it.
I need to find three aussie boxes to put these e-coy 15Btn marked mags and N.S.D. marked mags into and add to my collection.

[Peter Laidler]

Thinking on my feet, I wonder if the original Bren mag boxes in Aust service were converted to 7.62mm spec and retained for use with the L4's and the L2 rifles.

Remembered now why the modification was slightly different in Oz. The UK L4 mags were slightly curved but the Oz L4/L2 rifle mags were straighter. Seem to be as reliable as each other although we'd occasionally see curved pommy magazines

[browningautorifle]

Like our CDN mags, which were straight profile. The UK mags had the slight arcuate profile.

[TactAdv]

Attachment 61331Attachment 61330

So, what does a painted marking of 'FGK' on the front of such a mag box, above the normal box nomenclature, mean??

-TomH