Hello All!
Here are some images of a relatively new series of Australian Army insignia. As you can see, the (new) slimmer RAAMC stable belt buckle at the bottom of the image, is shown against previous generations of these uniform items, which were worn from the 1980’s to 1990’s.
Those of us who collect stable belts, will recognise the first two items immediately. The images show, the first style “British Army” or “Cavalry” style two buckle belts (on the top row). That particular older pattern item was worn by me in 1984, through to about 1990. At the time, stable belts were a private purchase item and these items were available in the correct Australian Army colour pattern for all Corps (N.B. only Medical Corps items are shown here in this post) and also in the correct colours for many Units as well (especially amongst Armour/Cav Units).
Turning back to the images provided here, the second larger format item (shown in the middle image), is the “Boy Scout” style buckle from the same period (mid 1980’s to mid 1990’s). That item was purchased (as a ‘spare’) from a mate of mine who discharged at the time… but given the nick name that I’ve always applied to that type of belt buckle design, I never did end up using that second item.
Here’s a ‘detail shot’ of the new (smaller) format belt, compared to the older (larger pattern) item:
So much for the ‘background info’. As you will see, the 3rd belt in the image, is one of the new Stable belt designs and as can be seen by comparison, it is designed to be used in place of a standard webbing belt. Other than the smaller belt (height) of these new items, you can see that they are essentially identical to the earlier period items in all other aspects of their design.
Note PLATATAC maker’s mark to verso. Supplier information can be found at the Australian equipment manufacturer’s web site:
http://www.platatac.com/platatac-rar-scu-stable-belt.html.
Further enquiries will be made about this point to the proper Offices in Canberra and Melbourne, however the MD of PLATATAC has indicated that these items are not Australian Army approved for uniform wear and are available as the result of Unit level requests for private purchase items. Once we have information from Defence Procurement, we will post details of any further information that we acquire.
Yours in research and collecting!
The Authors
charliebravobooks 