SUPPLYING THE DIGGERS

Images of soldiers in Great War 1914-1915 are both fascinating and heartbreaking. Have you ever wondered how the enormous amount of weapons, supplies and arms in those pictures got to our troops in the trenches?

The Army Museum at Bandiana is the place to learn the little known stories of how the Australian Army has kept soldiers supplied with everything they need, wherever they fight, for over 100 years.

During the Great War, the Australian Army Ordnance Corps supplied the Anzacs with ammunition, including tonnes of rounds for Australian artillery at Anzac Cove and on the Western Front. Keeping ammunition up to the big guns was a major effort.

In 1919 the Albury Banner and Wodonga Express reported the Australian artillery was supplied around 23,000 tons of ammunition for preliminary bombardments for the fighting at Ypres on 31 July 1917. And 42 000 tons of ammunition was fired on the enemy at the Battle of Broodseinde in early October 1917.

A battered red sign in the Bandiana Museum tells a local ammunition story, as it announces the ‘311 Supply Company RAAOC Ettamogah’.

Ettamogah, 15 minutes north of Albury, has been associated with Australian military defence since 1926. Originally grazing farmland, authorities selected the site as an ammunition storage area. It was well chosen. Close by is Albury which then was the junction between the different New South Wales and Victorian rail gauges – and Ettamogah was remote enough to be safe from attack.

In 1942, a RAAF ammunition depot was established at Ettamogah. Control passed to the Army’s 311 Supply Company in 1961, and the depot closed in 1982. During its time, Ettamogah stored everything from sticks of gelignite to 500-pound bombs.

The Ettamogah sign is among many unit and Corps signs in the Museum, each a testament to the men and women who kept the Army fighting.

The Army Museum at Bandiana is a short detour from the Hume Highway and houses the history of the Australian Army’s Logistic Corps’. The public are warmly welcome and each year around 16 000 people visit.