The great ACCO - and how they began

[Rod Diery]

Hi Les, This is part of a floating bridge set, in this case set up as a powered pontoon. I can't remember what the actual designation is. The outboard motor are standard civilian 40hp Johnsons painted olive drab.

The non-inflatable life jackets date the photo roughly pre-1975. These cumbersome things were basically a copy of the old WW2 British Board of Trade life jacket. They probaly killed almost as many men as they saved. They were notoriously difficult to put on, you needed a mate to get all the tapes in the right place. If you jumped over the side of a decent sized ship, the neck piece would flick up and break your neck. Once in the water, you could only lie on your back and consequently could only swim backwards. After about 1975 the Aust Army started issuing an excellent RFD inflatable life jacket which stayed in service until quite recently.

I'm not sure of the location but it must have been hot judging by the state of general undress of the troops.

By the way, the truck is a F2 tipper fitted with it's canvas canopy. Recognition point is the rounded rear mudguards.

Cheers
Rod