About 12 years old in Kyogle I was walking home from the library with a gun book and John Phillips, son of Shire Engineer, talked to me and mentioned there was a big gun lying out the back of the council yards. He showed me.  It was a machine gun tossed in the grass that would have come off a tracked vehicle, probably a tank, that the council would have acquired for some project such as uprooting trees I guess.  It was 7.92 mm Bergmann, made in Stuttgart.  Had LMG for Light Machine Gun stamped on it which seemed ironical because it was light for a tank but heavy to carry.

After cleaning it up and assembling loose parts I realized it would work if it had ammo.  I collected cartridges and ordered one for it from Mick Simmons Sydney gun store.  It was expensive and there was also no way to procure the disintegrating clip links that it used for feed.  It fired several hundred rounds a minute so that was not on my mind. As a kid we played a lot with it and I recall at Christmas holidays at Kingscliff walking up the beach with a meter length belt of blank .303 cartridges dangling from where the real bullets should be.  (Just fooling round).  No one stopped us or said anything.

As a responsible adult I rammed a 1/4″ bolt down the barrel so I could not be too guilty if questioned.

It was stored in our toolshed and when I moved out of the house to get away from missus verbal abuse it was still there 1999.  Later I felt sad to have lost it.  Then yesterday I got a call and seems that at time of moving out (would have had a lot on my mind) I had taken it over to be stored for safe keeping.  Cannot recall doing that.  But it is in safe hands.  That is good.  It looked similar to this: