I've just operated a 1940s Coleman burner inherited from my father (died April last year at 96) who in turn inherited it from a fellow whom he worked with for a decade or so. It hasn't been started for the past 50 years or so.
This guy , Roland Rodda, was a navigator in the New Zealnd air force in WW2 ; also a doctor, and spent some of wartime in the wilds of Papua New Guinea. He was the foundation professor of pathology at the Tasmanian medical school in the mid 1960s, and his special interest was neuropathology.
He was an accomplished mountaineer , having climbed with Ed Hillary and completed some first ascents of NZ peaks e.g. the Nth Buttress of Mt Aspiring in 1956. He was naturally attracted to the mountains of Tasmania, and better prospects professionally.
He recruited my father to the same dept (reader in medical microbiology) and in 1970 we emigrated by sea from Oxford , England.
Shortly after arrival aged 9 or so I went on a bushwalk in the south west wilderness area. Rodda led the party of a dozen or so , with my dad and brother included. It was a tough relentless climb and we didn't have the speed or experience to summit the peak (Mt Anne).
But that trip ignited my love of the outdoors and hiking.
I became a medical student and was taught pathology by old Roley. He used to smoke in lectures, incluing a couple on atherosclerosis!
He developed emphysema and after retirement in 1982 emigrated to England , the country of his wife's birth.
He spent his retirement in the Lakes District, hiking with an oxygen cylinder strapped to his back.
Moving on , he gifted the Coleman to my dad. Having informed dad the stove ran on petrol , my father was spooked and never tried to operate it.
He was fine using kerosene blowtorches , but petrol scared him!
Anyway today I pulled the stove out of its case and after lubing the leather valve with oil and cleaning the carbon from the brass mesh filter, fired it up using Shellite. It runs like a champ!
So well made; "Roly" the stove is going straight into the back of the Grenadier
Bottom pic is me ; the iconic Lake Pedder in the background. This has an 800m white quartzite beach. Sadly the lake was flooded in 1972 for a hydroelectricity scheme. thereby kicking of the
world's first Green political movement.
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