John Corcoran

John has maintained an interest in antique firearms and the Australian outback since he was a boy, and after using a .577/450 Hollis Martini rifle on buffalo leases in the Northern Territory during the 1950s, became interested in big bore black powder rifles.

In 1957, John married Margaret Keenan, of Broken Hill, and joined the NSW Police Force. After ten years as a police officer, including six years as a Detective in the Criminal Investigation Branch, John resigned to join the then fledgling computer industry as a salesman of mainframe computer systems.

In 1975, while Honorary Historian for the NSW Rifle Association, John published The Target Rifle in Australia 1860 to 1900, which was re-published in the USA in 1995.

John has continued his interest in researching antique firearms and the outback, and in 2003 published Horsemen of the Outback, being stories of the drovers, stockmen and blacksmiths of the northern Australian cattle country, in the days before helicopters and road trains.

John, in collaboration with co-author and photographer Fred Bienvenu, has been able to assemble this record of outstanding rifles in private collections in Australia.

Fred Bienvenu

Fred has always been fascinated with plants and the early days of botanical discovery, leading to a career in plant research. A desire to understand how and why things worked led to photographing the most intricate details of plants.

A common interest in family history led Fred and his wife Diana to research the Faithfull family in Australia back to 1792, culminating in their book, Faithfulls of Omeo in 1983.

Following his first retirement and a trip back to university to gain a Master of Clinical Audiology, Fred and Diana established an audiology clinic in Northeast Victoria.

A parallel interest in the mechanical world led to an interest in the manufacture of guns and rifles back to the earliest times. The quest was to work out how these firearms were made especially with the tools available at the time.

To photograph rifles for this book, studio lighting was used to achieve the best photographic conditions. After developing techniques for extreme close-up photographs of flower parts, creating worthy images of rifle locks is not so difficult with the right gear and technique.

For those wondering, the more odd-looking animal is a young three-toed Sloth