It’s a boring overcast day here at the Pacific Empire pad. I recently got a digital camera and tripod, so I thought I’d walk you around the flat and we’ll see what we can see …

Chinese Church

Yep, pretty overcast.

My girlfriend just got back from World Youth Day and gave me this boomerang. The painting depicts the Milky Way, which in Aboriginal mythology is a river in the skyworld.

Boomerang

Phil and Leanne have a beautiful aquarium:

Fish in Aquarium

The fish are all named after countries and cities. This one is Congo. The others are Prague, Israel and Colombia (the white one).

Fish

Oh yeah, Phil got a new rifle this weekend:

Ready .... aim ...

Wow, he looks so happy!

It’s a WWII vintage .303 service rifle from 1942.

Rifle overall

It is ridiculously heavy and solid. Imagine carrying this heavy rifle, plus bullets and pack, through the jungle … mind-blowing.

Here’s the bolt and sights:

Rifle detail

It came with a big padded bag:

Rifle Bag

New rifle

The bullets are frighteningly expensive, $30 for 20 ($1.50 each). Phil is going to repack the shells to save money.

.303 bullets

Our flat is lucky enough to have a dishwasher, although it does have different efficiencies on different days …

Dishes Roster

This stack of dirty dishes awaited me this morning:

Dirty dishes

But I made short work of it:

Dishes - done!

Leanne is working on a gorgeous painting. You can see part of the source photo she is working from at the top of the easel.

Lovelee's painting

And lastly, my new tripod, $38.50 from Trademe. It is a Topman and gets to 1.5 metres (eye-level). It is heaps of fun to play with and makes it super-easy to get sharp, natural-looking shots without using the flash.

My new tripod

All the photos link to my Flickr photostream.

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3 Responses to “What’s New at Pacific Empire (Photo Post)”

An interesting virtual tour. That rifle’s a nice one. Though me thinks Phil might want to invest a small bit of cash in a recoil pad if he hasn’t already.

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Phill: Do yourself and the Enfield a favor, check out the scope mounts made by S&K Scope Mounts. The mount clamps into the charger guide,(That dove tail slot cut into the top reciever bridge). You don’t drill or tap the rifle. All you have to do to install the mount on the rifle is tighten a socket head cap screw, then install the scope in the included rings. Use a little Loctite, and the mount is rock steady, I know I have one. Here is the link: http://www.scopemounts.com/index.html?main.html
Good shooting, love the blog, Jim Granger, USA

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Hi there, for use in the jungle a slightly cut down model of the rifle was issued. A little weight was cut off the stock I think. The point of this military weapon was that it was a knock down killing gun. When used in the Pacific war it faced the Japanese who used a .25 I think. In Europe the enemy knew to keep out of the way of the thing. In its day it was a very bad boy. Someone posted about a recoil pad. I don’t know about that but I do know that the school I attended left the canoes behind the target area. When we fired at the targets the bullets went straight through them, then the sand bank behind them, then the boards holding up the sand bank, then smashed the canoes to pieces, and then carried on on their way never to be seen again. The range was meant for .22 use. Oops. Take care with it, people only have one accident with one of these.

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