Below is a copy of a post (with additions and alterations) I made on another shooting site and have replicated here to hopefully attract a wider audience and possibly gain further information.
A question for anyone with an interest in Australian Rifle Association history;
The local Rifle Club has been shooting at its current range site for many years and this can be shown by just looking around the butts. With little effort one can still find spent Mk VII 303 projectiles but what is surprising is that also Mk VI projectiles can still be found.
Also, about two years ago the Club resurfaced all the mounds from 300 yds back to 900 yds but just prior to this happening I borrowed a friends metal detector and ran it over all mounds. To my surprise I located about half a dozen spent 303 cases, several of which were Mk VI. Very surprisingly though, I found no 7.62mm cases!
Which makes me wonder; just when did the Australian Rifle Clubs finally exhaust the supply of the old Mk VI 303 round and start using the MK VII?
My late Maternal Grandfather uses to shoot with the now defunct Tanunda Rifle Club (Barossa Valley, South Australia) prior to WWII and once told me that with the start of WW11 hostilities all 303 Rifles had to be surrendered to the Army 'for the duration' and so he handed his over. Of course he never saw it again, despite being told that at the War's end that it would be returned. Nor did he ever receive any compensation.
I inherited all his cleaning and other shooting gear and amongst all of it I found about half a dozen Mk VI rounds, so it appears that possibly they were still using this ammunition as late as 1939.
Anyone have any further information?