Roseville Rifle Club Australia

One of the people in the club that really make things count is our illustrious club Statistician, Ian Palmer (aka Palmtree). What makes Ian a good statistician? Three things:

1. He is at the club house almost every week which means he is on top of every week’s shoot (no backlog!)
2. He keeps the RRC website pages up to date for scores (7 disciplines + the Greenwell Cup) so we all know where we stand all the time
3. At the end of the shooting year (31 May) he compiles the list of handicap winners, award winners, runners up, and pin hole prize money so that the Club is ready for the presentation day  … and those prizes are the things that keep us energised and coming back.

All of this makes Ian pivotal for the good running of the club.

But other than being the great statistician that he is, who is the man behind the role? Let me tell you about Ian Palmer:

1. Ian has been shooting since 1966 – so that means 2026 marks his 60 years of shooting (target rifle (TR) for 48 years then F-Class for the past 12 years)
2. Initially he joined Mosman Neutral Bay Rifle Club at Liverpool – which later moved to ANZAC Rifle Range at Malabar.
3. Ian won his first Range Prize at an Open Competition at Mudgee on the 6th April 1969 scoring 35.5 at 500 yards using his .303 rifle.
4. He won his first Queens Badge in Brisbane in August 1971 (over time, he has won 10 Queens Badges)
5. At the end of the 1971–1972 shooting season he was the Mosman Neutral Bay Club Champion
6. In 1975 he won his first Prize Shoot (Grafton NSW) after a tie and a shoot-off that lasted 9 shots.
7. In his spare time, he would make rifle stocks (teak and walnut) and did bedding of rifles for people. In total, by 1989 he had made 163 rifle stocks for 74 individual shooters (including Queen’s winners).
8. He has been a member of Roseville Rifle Club since 1980 …. Yes, that means 46 years!
9. In his first year with Roseville Rifle Club, Ian became the Club Champion and this was the first of six successive club championships with his new club. In those six years he also managed to win the Champion of Champions match at Hornsby three times. Note: overall he has won RRC Club Champion 8 times.
10. Ian’s proudest moment as a shooter was winning the leadup (The Hunt Aggregate) at the South Australian Queens in 2007.
11. Ian loves team shooting, with his team winning the Merrett Match in Vic in 1971, and he was part of 8 Sargard winning teams (shot at NSW Queens). Overall, he has also been in over 40 winning teams
12. He has been an integral part of the award-winning Roseville Arn Hammond FTR team (he was a member of the team the 8 out of 8 times that we won the competition); he was also in a couple of award winning Roseville FSTD teams.
13. He was in the 2004 New South Wales Veteran State Team

You will often see Ian staying back to score when people are doing load testing; or he is the one helping out a new shooter. It is club members like this that really make Roseville tick. Thanks for making it count Ian.

Janet Beale

Comments are closed.