Australian WWII - Far North Queensland Metal detecting and recovery

[AT P Sweep]

Another up-date

your mystery round is a .303 , what they call a stove pipe , which means the round has slammed into another in the breach , might have been from a Bren gun or .303 browning machine gun , usually a automatic loading error , sometimes it happens with a bolt action rifle , if its rapid fire and loaded when the previous round has stuck in the chamber .

Woww!! Thanks

[AT P Sweep]

Wednesday ~

Another day off ~ I was going to have a day in but at midday did a rush pack and headed off ~ decided to work another 'camp site' which I have endeavoured to MD previously with very mixed results ~

Weather clear .. and hot ` ~ but while a gentle breeze kept up it was fine... but that was not always the deal !

But what started out as a search for a WWII camp site turned into ; ~

Contemporary/ modern
+
1967
+
1954
+
1942

Amazing considering that 90 % were found in a 20 sq m area !



One Mills grenade base plug ~



One Stainless steel Men's ring ~ "AL X " Stainless ~ and a very nice silver necklace pendant ~



The 303 shells read as ~ 54 CAC 7

[AT P Sweep]

As a post comment... the original reason I have swept this area repeatedly is that the area in the distance and on the foreshore ~ is a registered camp site of yet another Australian WWII campsite ~

I have found almost nothing on the shore line even on this outing but a .45 calibre bullet head. !

But on the immediate hill top I found large numbers of expended 303 blank shells. This of course tells me that at very least the hill was used at least once in a training exercise ~

But the far shore line , stil under water is a very flat area ~ shallow which appears ideal for a camp site. But of course after some 70m years ~ and a number of periods of the dam levels dropping to as low as 24% ( currently 62%) either the site has been searched previously or the full site is simply not yet exposed ~

And unfortunately as the annual Wet tropics season cuts in the odds of the water dropping even further diminish ~ although having said that the rain fall to date is well short of a normal year ~ So who really knows whether it will be a 'Bonanza year' for the amateur archaeologist !??

[michael77]

Great thread
Maybe a photo of all your finds in one shot?

[AT P Sweep]

LOL

Michael ~ Mate ~ thats a BIG ask !! I will do a compilation of snaps ` Hows that ~

[michael77]

sounds good mate

[Australia]

That silver thing you called a "silver necklace pendent" is a clasp to suit a pandora ladies bracelet

[AT P Sweep]

Aust

Cheers mate ~ actually the 'Office lady ' at Work told me the same thing.. it is tiny but very cool !

[AT P Sweep]

A sampler ( michael) ~

I was given a small contribution to my collection today ~ a Bandolier plus 50 303 ball with stripper clips dated 1959.

But the nice surprise was a 20 mm shell still intact but disarmed ~that is contents removed ~ so played around with range of 'smaller' bores ~ 8 mm to 40 mm ~

[Steve T]

Are you referring to the shiney brass cartridge in the last couple of photos as a 20mm? If you are, it isn't, it's a 50cal, but apologies if you weren't as I can see a 20 in your other picture