I have a friend in Australia who was part of the school based cadet system, he told me that they got the rifles from the army already painted yellow on the muzzle area. Some of the rifles they got were in like brand new un-issued or FTR condition with like new bores.
He was told by a Army ordnance corps officer that the yellow marking was a way the army RO used to identify on ranges from a distance during cadet shooting practices which guns the cadets had that were safe to shoot.
Drill Purpose only and basically deactivated regular issue rifles were painted with a red band on muzzle, receiver and butt stock with the letters DP.
Some DP rifles but still usable for shooting in regular army stocks are yellow painted on the receiver and butt but not the muzzle.
A yellow banded muzzle meant normally serviceable but for Cadet only issue.
Cadets did not get any rifles without paint bands, all were marked with yellow bands.
Drill purpose but still emergency use regular army issue LE's had a yellow band around the receiver and another around the butt with the letters DP clearly marked.
A red muzzle band on the front meant not safe to shoot and a green band was blanks only.
Green banded meant the rifle was worn-out but still usable for training with blanks which regular use of would ruin a good barrel.
Red banded or strictly drill purpose only rifles also usually had the firing pin clipped short and bolt head firing pin hole welded closed.
Here are some examples except for the regular red and green muzzle banded rifles as they are very rare to find as basically all of them were scrapped and not sold off in case someone used them with regular ammo -
Regular Army Drill Purpose (usually held at recruit training establishments or for parade practice use only)
Cadet issue but still okay with live ammo -
Here is a rare to find Cadet issue marked to indicate not for training use of Ball but okay for Drill Purpose (red) band, probably has a worn out bore or had been used for blanks in the past -
When Australia switched to the FN or L1A1 rifle in 1959 they still had around 800,000 Lee Enfield SMLE's in war stocks and had made the SMLE up until 1956. Up until the end of WW2 in 1945, Lithgow had already made 640,000 SMLE's. Post WW2 they downsized their military to around 200,000 regular and reserve troops and only needed 220,000 L1A1's for all their needs.
They had post WW2 refurbished all their wornout but still serviceable rifles for long term war stock storage and destroyed basically all their defective rifles and had still more than enough rifles to issue out tens of thousands of SMLE's to the hundreds of schools who were part of the school Cadet corps until they finally ended the issue of SMLE's and requested them all returned in the late 1980's.
