War Memorials and Honour Rolls in the State of New South Wales, Australia.

Bergalia Machine Gun goes missing !

During the early stages of the Second World War; Australians experienced a genuine fear that the Japanese were going to invade their country. Indeed, merchant shipping was sunk by Japanese submarines off the coast near Bergalia and the attacks upon Darwin in February, and incursion of midgit submarines into Sydney Harbour in May of 1942 - fed those fears. This fear then led to paranoia by local authorities, if urban legend is to be believed. It has been said that:- fearing the Japanese may be able to remove the First World War relic from the Bergalia War Memorial and use it against the local population, the 08 Maxim was removed and it's fate is now unknown. Whilst this story cannot be confirmed, it is a good 'yarn' and whilst absurd - it is certainly one explanation as to why the gun may have been removed from the memorial. When a re-dedication service was held for the memorial in 2004, it was decided to have a "reproduction" Maxim Gun made up and a local man (Graham Greig) who had family ties to some diggers named on the memorial; rose to the occasion and produced a creditable reproduction of the original weapon.