Open to all CLDPC members. Come join us for our regular Wednesday night training session.
1st Sunday of the month
range 1 10.30
25 and 50 metre targets- Open to all CLDPC members. Come join us for our regular Wednesday night training session.
- HPC range use
Ranges 1/3/4 in use from 12.30 for HPC members
CLDPC members use range 2 - Quick 45 round match , Not only 9MM. open to all calibres .
big targets at varying times
Everyone welcome
Range 1 at 10.30 
Black Powder Cartridge match
Everyone welcome ,join in the smoke and noise
<img class="alignnone wp-image-17420" src="https://cldpc.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/black-powder-pistol-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" />
- Open to all CLDPC members. Come join us for our regular Wednesday night training session.
<strong>Working bee from 8am</strong>
BBQ lunch supplied from 12 pm- Open to all CLDPC members. Come join us for our regular Wednesday night training session.
This memorial competition in honour of our past members
Incorporates
"The Kathy" Kathy Renfrey 25M Sports Pistol Matches
<img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-16621" src="https://cldpc.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/IMG_7932-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" />
"The Wally" Wally Wright "Hey Fella" Centrefire Match
<img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-16620" src="https://cldpc.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/IMG_7931-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" />
"The Davo" John Davidson Memorial Black Powder 25M match
and Air Pistol Matches
<img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-16638" src="https://cldpc.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/IMG_7941-002-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" />
Entry Form Here <a href="https://cldpc.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2026-Memorial-entry.pdf">2026 Memorial entry</a>
Collectors Club 12 pm
Collectors club last Sunday of each month , everyone welcome.
All types of collectable firearms, weapons, militaria .
Come along show us what you got,
- Open to all CLDPC members. Come join us for our regular Wednesday night training session.
Home / About / Club history / The first women
“Annie Oakleys win their case”
In 1963, two members of this club became the first women in New South Wales licensed to shoot target pistol — by taking the refusal to court and arguing it themselves.
Fenning mentions, almost in passing, that until January 1964 a pistol licence was knocked back by police as a matter of course, and had to be won on appeal before a magistrate. Two members of the club went through exactly that — and came out of it as the first women in New South Wales licensed to shoot target pistol.
Two Liverpool housewives have become the first women in New South Wales to gain pistol licenses for target shooting.
— Liverpool News, 1963
They were Mrs Grace Cadden, of McGirr Crescent, and Mrs Val Banyer, of William Street, whose husband Geoff was the club’s secretary. The police refused both applications. The two women appealed, appeared at Liverpool Court, and — in the paper’s own words — “conducted their own cases”. Mr A. S. Hall, S.M., upheld the appeal.
At the time, the paper reported, only one other woman in the State held a pistol licence at all, and hers was a business licence held in partnership with her husband in a firearms importing business.
Geoff Banyer, interviewed for the same article, put the result in an international context and then said what he thought of the law:
The International Shooting Union has recognised the need for a separate match for women shooters, and as from the 1962 World Championships held in Cairo the Women’s Match shall form part of every National and International Championship.
The action of these two local women should set the ball rolling in this State.
Melbourne, Easter 1964
That article closed on a hope — that Mrs Banyer and Mrs Cadden would make the New South Wales team travelling to Melbourne for the 1964 National Championships.
They did. The Australian Women’s Weekly of 27 May 1964 devoted a full page to the Australian women’s championships at Albion, Melbourne, where eighteen women competed — “from the youngest, a schoolgirl of 15, to the oldest, a mother of a 30-year-old son”. Three of the eighteen came from this club.
The first women to apply for a target-shooting licence in New South Wales were Mrs. Val Banyer, mother of two, and Mrs. Grace Cadden, mother of three, both from Liverpool.
— The Australian Women’s Weekly, 27 May 1964
Val Banyer told the magazine why she kept at it.
It’s such a different sport — and it’s such a thrill to get a good score.
On the line at the State Championship
Val Banyer went on competing against women from clubs all over New South Wales. This press photograph has her comparing pistols with Lionel Cogan of the Northern Districts club at a State Championship — her shooting jacket already carrying patches from Mudgee, Melbourne and beyond.
How times have changed
The language of the clippings is worth reading twice. The Women’s Weekly ran its page under “THESE PISTOL-PACKIN’ DOLLS…”, over a standfirst offering one competitor’s explanation: “If you can’t beat the men, join them.” The Liverpool News called Grace Cadden and Val Banyer “Annie Oakleys” and “housewives”. A third paper wondered whether girls preferred giggles to guns.
The officials were rather more direct. “The girls take this sport very seriously,” said Phil Garrett, honorary secretary of the Amateur Pistol Shooting Union of Australia. And the women were the most direct of all: told they could not have a licence, they took the State to court and won.
Sixty years on, the ritual Fenning described — the refusal as a matter of course, then the appeal before a magistrate — is long gone, and so is the idea that a woman on a firing line is a novelty worth a headline. Twenty years after Grace Cadden and Val Banyer won their appeal, another member of this club, Pattie Dench, took an Olympic bronze in Los Angeles at the age of 52 — the first Olympic shooting medal Australia had ever won.
Today women shoot here every week, sit on the committee, run the line, and turn out for the club in teams matches. The only thing that has really changed is that nobody thinks it remarkable any more.
Clippings from a club member’s scrapbook.
The Badcoe still runs every February
More than fifty years on, the centrefire teams match instituted when the Kentlyn range opened is still on the calendar.