Old shooters tended well

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 12, Issue 551, 30 August 1994, Page 16 (Supplement)

Old shooters tended well

By

Michele

Monaghan

The Queen Elizabeth II Army Memorial Museum in Waiouru boasts some 3500 artifacts in the Armoury alone, ranging from pistols to long arms and ammunition, bayonets to swords and Samurai. Firearms Curator Merv Beech said he could be at the museum for 25 years until he retires and still wouldn't have everything done. Luckily Mr Beech has

some help. Ray Liddell (pictured left) and Graham King have travelled to Waiouru from Auckland a couple of times a year for the last four or so years to pursue their labour of love. The two men both own weapons collections of their own, and they travel to Waiouru to pass on their knowledge and expertise and to help preserve artifacts for future generations. "What we've got here is unique to any museum in thecountry," saidMrBeech "Whatis here has got to be the very best to still be around in 500 years." Consequently a lot of time is spent preserving and restoring old weapons, although Mr King's first job at the museum involved cataloguing all the edged weapons. This took a suitcase full of reference material and many hours of voluntary work. Mr Liddell and Mr King marvel at the Waiouru museum's collection of weapons and the way they are looked after. "The Auckland War Memorial Museum has got some of its stuff up in the ceiling and the displays are in a shocking condition," said Mr Liddell. Mr Beech went on to ex-

plain how these displays are mounted. "They drill a hole through here and here," he said with a look of shock on his face, and said you wouldn't do that to a 200 year old painting so why do it to a 200 year old weapon. Mr Liddell puts the shocking treatment of old weapons down to guns being a four-letter word since the Aramoana shootings. Mr Liddell went on to relate a shooting in Westland in 1941. "Stanley Graham went mad and shot three police constables, a sergeant and a couple of home guard men and they didn't ban the .303," he said. Mr Liddell said the Aramoana shootings had really shocked the country. "And yet the next weekend there were damn near as many killed on the roads as at Aramoana ... people are used to that." Mr Liddell described watching a bank robber with a sawn off shotgun hold up a bank on TV. "He had what was probably an 1 8th century Flintlock fowling piece. It was probably worth more than the money he got in the robbery and he'd sawn it off!"