Australian manufactured Rhodesian camouflage commercial copy

Bought in the early '80s, when the predominant uniform of the Australian Army were OG fatigues, this uniform was seen on at least one SNCO during a Brigade exercise. It might be reasonable to assume that it may have been utilised by OpFor or SF elements of the period when COTS camo items were popular.











The original rimmed plate black buttons have been replaced by standard military OD dishplate buttons.

Nice Im jelous is there any info left on the lables

Unfortunately all the writing has been washed out of the labels otherwise I would have taken a pic of them

Weird... John Starr or something like that?

Precedes John Starr ... they also did another pattern which was seen on a NorForce patrol in an early '80's recruiting pamphlet. As South Africa had its 'Hunter' camouflage from commercial sources - this could almost be the Australian equivalent.

filupe wrote:Precedes John Starr ... they also did another pattern which was seen on a NorForce patrol in an early '80's recruiting pamphlet. As South Africa had its 'Hunter' camouflage from commercial sources - this could almost be the Australian equivalent.

Yep I got those pamphlets, had them for a while... was going to post an article and photos about that camo on CamoUniforms.net just haven't got round to doing it yet...

the reason I askad if there was any info on the lable to my eye the the camo looks like the stuff made by Adro / Adder in South Africa

loski wrote:the reason I askad if there was any info on the lable to my eye the the camo looks like the stuff made by Adro / Adder in South Africa

I know the stuff you are talking about. Yes, they did a Rhodesian copy as well but their pattern is also quite distinctive in its own right i.e. quite easy to tell an Adro/Adder Rhodie copy from a genuine Rhodie article. Occasionally on EBay you can find their stuff being passed off as the 'real' thing ...

Yeh Filupe I dont think any of the Comercial copies of the Rhodesian camo are quite right and you can pick the copys out.
Still I wouldnt mind getting my hands on the set you have there

That is very nice !

owen

Whoa!!! That's interesting...

I'm quite well versed on the various Rhodesian camo copies, to include the Zim "re-issue" stuff, Adder/Adro, Paladin, Spanish made repros, Trident, etc.. However, this is the first time I have ever heard of an Australian made repro set! Fascinating! Must be some very rare stuff.

Strange that they would have made a repro back in the early 80's though. The genuine stuff was quite available and cheap back then. Most of the copies appeared in the late 80's and early 90's.

Cheers,

Mike

Have you seen that documantary on selection from the 1980s "Golden Road" or something like that... in it there is a guy wearin a full Rhodesian set and some other interesting cams through it too... including trial DPCU... MAybe the CPL wearing the Rhodesian set is wearing one of these repros? I haven't got the dvd with me anymore but it's probably available onyoutube or somewhere...

Martin wrote:Have you seen that documantary on selection from the 1980s "Golden Road" or something like that... in it there is a guy wearin a full Rhodesian set and some other interesting cams through it too... including trial DPCU... MAybe the CPL wearing the Rhodesian set is wearing one of these repros? I haven't got the dvd with me anymore but it's probably available onyoutube or somewhere...

I saw that documentary recently (have it on my hard drive). It was the medic lecturer and I believe he was wearing a genuine Rhodie jacket. AFAIK Australians have always had an affinity for Rhodesia and its camo. Many Aussies went over there to offer their services (I personally know two) and Rhodesian camo has always been deemed effective in the Australian scrub, possibly because of the similarity between the topography of the two countries. So to me its no surprise that a local company decided to do a copy.