Historic event goes off with a bang

Five years of restoration culminated in a resounding boom in the Wanganui War Memorial forecourt on Saturday as Wanganui's gun with a story, the Krupp gun, released a shot.
The Krupp gun is understood to be one of the only operational pieces of its kind in the world.
Its last shot before its long journey to Wanganui was fired in the Boer War, in about 1900.
The Krupp Gun started another journey - toward restoration - in 2004, when Geoff Lawson, a firearms enthusiast, approached then Whanganui Museum director Sharon Dell about restoring the gun, which was on display outside the museum and deteriorating badly.
And so began Mr Lawson's five-year project to restore the gun as closely to its original condition as possible, aided by a group of keen volunteers.
About a year into the project, Mr Lawson said he realised little was known about the gun.
It has since been revealed that the Krupp BL 75mm field cannon, manufactured in a Krupp factory in Germany in 1892, was "a gun with a story", as Mr Lawson puts it.
It saw four months of action in South Africa during the Boer War before it was captured in 1900 by Canadian and Kiwi soldiers.
Wanganui received the gun and its limber (ammunition trailer) in 1906.
During World War II it was buried in case it was spotted from the air by enemy aircraft. It was exhumed in the 1950s - by which time the limber had disappeared - and put on display at 5th Battalion HQ, then outside the Whanganui Regional Museum.
During his time restoring the gun, Mr Lawson began writing a book to be released later this year called Our Gun: A Wanganui Krupp Gun Story.
In it, Mr Lawson has charted the history of the gun, which played a key role in two pivotal battles during the war, he said.
"I wrote to a historian in South Africa and I realised that it was a fantastic story. It was a gun with a story to tell. So I spent five years researching and writing about it."
After all their hard work, and despite a few minor glitches - including a misfire when the breach door was left open, the Krupp gun performed fantastically, Mr Lawson said.
"For me, it was a culmination. And I was surprised at the amount of people that were there, it was more than I was expecting. It was fantastic and exciting."
Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws, who had taken a keen interest in, and helped fund, the project, said he was stunned by the workmanship of Mr Lawson and his team.
"[I felt like] Wanganui had cleared its throat and was announcing itself on the world stage. With a bang. This will be an artillery piece that draws visitors from around the globe and makes very sure that every Anzac Day from henceforth Wanganui's commemoration is extra special and nationally significant."
The Krupp gun was is now in the care of the Antiquities Trust, of which Mr Lawson is a member, and will reside in the Whanganui War Memorial Hall.

+ More pictures, P9