The Rifle Club Movement and Australian Defence 1860-1941

A Cooee member is completing a PhD at the Australian Defence Force Academy in 2013.  The thesis examines the rifle club movement and Australian defence between 1860 and 1941.  The rifle club movement began in the 1860s to support the Volunteers and later Militia with musketry.  Many early Volunteer units were de facto rifle clubs and annual prize matches were restricted to Volunteers.   After 1871 there was a slow growth in civilian rifle clubs, but their number – and subsequent influence in the movement - exploded during the Boer War 1899-1902, supported as they were by government with grants, ammunition and service rifles.  As WWI approached the military tried to bring the rifle club movement under firm control as a third line of reserves, but this was resisted by civilian clubs.  When WWI broke out, the rifle club movement was sidelined with the formation of the AIF.  In the post-war period, the movement found itself placed under the Minister for Defence and not Army, but by 1931 had managed to return to the military fold.  However, with the outbreak of WWII, again the movement was sidelined and worse, was placed into recess in 1941 for the duration of the war.