Syd Miller left for quieter ranges on July 31st 2010, but he certainly enjoyed an interesting life.

After working in a gun shop as a young man, he gained a position at the Sporting Arms factory at St Mary’s in Adelaide. Amongst other things, this factory produced the famous Omark 44 action and barrels plus the popular Sportco rimfire rifles and shotguns. Syd was employed and trained as a stockmaker, a skill that he pursued for the rest of his life. Anyone wanting a wood stock created or a top class chequering job knew where to get it. He was a pretty handy gunsmith too, and always seemed to know how to fix non performing rifles.

Naturally, he had a keen interest in all forms of shooting, and was also a keen wildcatter and developer of cartridges. Syd experimented with the parent 308 Winchester case necked down to 6mm, and kept trying various lengths until he found one that worked well enough for competitive benchrest. He was in fact using a 6mmBR long before it became and “official” cartridge. In 1973, at the first ever ten target benchrest Nationals (in Adelaide) Syd won the 200 yards experimental match using a rifle he built using an Omark action, and a shortened 308 calibre wildcat.

When the Omark factory closed Syd took a job with FC Lovelock in Adelaide, who just happened to be the agents for Shilen rifles and barrels, Speer bullets, as well as the DuPont distributors for Australia. Having match grade barrels and excellent components at his fingertips gave him even more incentive to shoot benchrest. In 1979, Syd won the heavy varmint grand aggregate at the Southern Varmint Titles in Adelaide, using his own version of the 6mmBR. The USA shooters who attended this match were impressed!

Syd never did win a 4-Gun Nationals, but in 1980 he finally gained the required points for entry into the Hall of Fame.

Syd was a mentor to several of the Adelaide benchrest clan including Brendan Atkinson, Colin Tucker and Alan Peake, who all acknowledged him as being instrumental to their success.