Thanks Sledge

My memory is of large naval sailing ship era muzzle loaders, but that could be just "memory creep" --- like "thread creep", only worse...

:-)

although now I think about it, I seem to remember images of the spoked wheels being manhandled around over the chasm, which could not have been the case with that era naval gun mountings...

I really would love to see that race again, is it still performed anywhere? The training to stay in shape would be MURDER! I thought it might have been the Royal Engineers doing it...

"2000 pounds" - How many were in the team? I remember the chasm!

Btw, Boer War reminds me. I live just up the road from the Enoggera Army Base (Brisbane Qld Aus). The streets around it bear the names of battles and people from then and the First World War. Wardell St is the main passageway from Enoggera through to Ashgrove, going around the city rather than in/out of it. And we still have the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary operating - named after Gallopili. The last veteran of WW I had his state funeral the other day.


And also to mind springs the famous BW engagement at some tiny spring or creek bed where the Aussies were considered all wiped out by the British, who didn't bother to relieve them for quite a while. When they finally got there, they found to their amazement that the surrounded outnumbered Aussies were basically in charge of the place, sneaking out at night to play guerilla games in the surrounding terrified force... We may not have a big army, (or always competent leadership!) but we can handle ourselves creatively in a pinch! :0

Now you have fired some memories....

One of my mother's cousins in WWII was sunk in a submarine, returned to duty, captured by the japanese and treated to their hospitality in the islands, had been hung up by his wrists, which were rather strangely elongated, and had lost all his teeth.

He used to take out his falsies and play the smallest harmonica ever made inside his lips - no hands. He had a foxie-terrier dog who would sit on its backlegs and howl IN TUNE with him...

Robin