Creator: Alison Wain and Andrew Schroeder
Date: 2010
Introduction: The Australian War Memorial in Canberra possesses a wide-ranging and significant collection of large technology objects related to the experience of Australians in conflict. As well as the more well-known objects, such as the Lancaster bomber “G for George” and the Japanese midget submarine, it includes a variety of mechanised vehicles, including tracked-laying armoured vehicles, trucks, four wheel drives, cars, motorcycles,and other specialised vehicle types.
In the late 1990s, the condition of this collection of vehicles was highly varied: some vehicles had arrived direct from the military in fully serviceable order, and had been kept that way, while others were non-functional and, in some cases, badly deteriorated. Based on the idea that operation is the best way to preserve complex mechanical systems, a maintenance program had been started in the early 1990s to maintain those already in operational condition, with the aim of bringing further vehicles up to this standard as time and money permitted. Some, such as the Centurion and T34 tanks, were kept operational principally to enable them to move under their own power. Two, a Land Rover mounting a 106mm recoilless rifle (Fig. 1), and a recovery vehicle, the M816 Wrecker, were also roadworthy and registered, and were occasionally driven to events around Canberra as mobile promotional displays.
Reference: Alison Wain and Andrew Schroeder, ‘We’ll have that…and that… and, oh, just everything!’, Big Stuff 2010
DOI Link:
| Wain, Alison, & Schroeder, Andrew. (2010). We’ll have that…and that… and, oh, just everything!. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4086703 |
