monthly distributions of an Australian Artillery Calendar have generated a few helpful responses. Please keep them coming. Thank you for your support. The August calendar is available via email. Please let me know if you want a copy. August and previous editions are available in the Australian Artillery Association website. The RAA National Memorial Re-dedication. The Regimental Committee is working on the goal to re-dedicate the Memorial in 2027. They wish to extend the National Memorial to acknowledge the contribution of Gunners over the past 50 years and provide for recognition of future service. The RAA National Memorial stands atop Mt Pleasant in Canberra. The Memorial was unveiled by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on 9 March 1977. While substantial fundraising has been conducted, the committee still need your financial support. You can donate via their website www.raanm2027.com Ben Lans has penned a great article for us about the birth of the Army Training Area “Bradshaw”. Big thanks to Ben for his story. The Ben Lans Article Bradshaw - The Birth of a Training Area ‘Bigger than Belgium’ was the phrase used to describe the new piece of dirt that Defence purchased in the early 2000s. Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but the cattle station known as Bradshaw (after a Scottish sea captain of the early 1800s), at over one million hectares, is one massive piece of land. Situated in the NT, between the Victoria and Fitzmaurice Rivers, Bradshaw Field Training Area is arguably the largest land TA in the world. Except perhaps Russia… who knows how big some of Rusky TAs are? When the TA and the Darwin Air Weapons Range Complex is in use, the contiguous military airspace enables the largest restricted airspace for Defence training in the western world, with unrestricted maximum upper limit. As a consultant to Defence and as an ex gunner who understands live fire and manoeuvre, I was very lucky to be asked to preside over the various design and range siting boards for the establishment Bradshaw TA. This is a short story of Bradshaw, from what it was to where it is today. Before the settlers came in the early 1800s, the area was rich with Aboriginal occupation. I do not pretend to know what that period was like and I only pass on information that I learned first-hand from the indigenous elders or that I saw with my own eyes. The TA as it stands today comprises primarily two useful (for training) river valleys, the Angalarri and the Koolendong. These are reachable by road and provide the plains, grasslands and woody scrub that are representative of the NT terrain. The rest of the TA, some two thirds of it, comprises the typical high mesas of the Kimberley with river valleys
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