Roseville Rifle Club Australia

Archive for 2026

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

Roughly, “to be mentioned in despatches” means when a superior officer mentions, in an official report, a particular person under their command due to that person’s meritorious action(s). That meritorious action is exactly what happened this week on Wednesday morning when Alex Toth shot 3 PIN HOLES out of 10 shots at 300m; and to make things more interesting, she shot an additional PIN HOLE in her second detail (also 10 shots). It was such a phenomenal outcome that the Captain of the Club (Rob Trodden), made note of it to all members in his weekly email (our club version of “despatches”).

Now, Alex has been shooting for only 1 year and shoots in Target Rifle B grade. That is the absolute definition of “meritorious”. But in that year, she hasn’t been idle; according to HEXTA, Alex has clocked up over 150 details across TR, FSTD and some FTR in that year. Her form has definitely improved. But her secret sauce is attributable to 3 things:-

1. Perseverance (practice, practise, practice)
2. The various people in the club that have helped coach Alex along her journey
3. The extra shooting she is also doing at North Sydney Small Bore and Air Rifle Club (NSSBARC) at the neighbouring 50m range using a .22cal rifle.

Congrats to Alex for being “mentioned in despatches”. Keep up the good work – you wont be in B grade for much longer with scores like that!

Janet Beale

It was a horror end to 2025 with the awful events at Bondi. The community was rocked to its core – and collectively we have said “no” to extremist violence. However, the repercussions are that there is now new gun legislation at the State and Federal level that has now been passed. We all need to understand and work with the authorities to support that new legislation to ensure we survive as a sport and help keep the community feel safer.

One outcome is that we took a long break over Christmas in sympathy with the community and our neighbours. However, Roseville Rifle Club is now back on the range. Roseville is Duty Club this month; therefore, this post is to highlight how the club has pulled together at this time to support the other clubs on the range for the shooting activities.

Whether it is helping with set-up (range flags, range servers, etc) or range officer duties (flouro vests, briefings, safety checks) or helping with pack up (range flags, ranger servers etc) the Rosevillians were out in number lending a hand. There were also the usual Saturday jobs to be done too (targets up, tents up, monitor set up and then packing up all of that afterwards). And of course, where would we be without Dmitri and his trailer skills?

Thanks to everyone that has been helping with “Range Duty” month. We couldn’t do it without you – and it was good to see so many people back after the break. Check out the photos!

But what about the shooting you ask? Sydney has thrown our way some weird weather in January (wind / rain / heat) that meant the cancelling of one of the shoots and some pretty tricky conditions.  For today at least, the best part of the shooting was the ice blocks delivered by Captain Rob Trodden. Just don’t ask anyone about our scores over the past couple of weeks.

Janet Beale

Chris	Alan	Rob
Alan	Nader	Sam
Alex and Christie	Steve	Rob

Sam and Richard

Alex and Christie