Per­haps I’ve been a lit­tle neg­a­tive about Ex Wal­laby 05, and for awhile, per­haps for­got­ten about the most uplift­ing radio comms state­ment trans­mit­ted. It was made by my com­pany com­man­der just after the tank mishap, and when the word ‘exhaus­tion’ failed to describe what all the com­man­ders and troopers […]

Unlike most of Aus­tralia, the peo­ple of Rock­hamp­ton and its envi­rons under­stand Singlish a lit­tle bet­ter, see­ing as we have had a per­ma­nent armed forces base there and have trained there for almost a third of every year since 1990. The sign­boards we stick up every­where help too:

“Doesn’t this feel like an episode of ‘Band of Brothers?‘

3SG Ger­ard Tan asked any­one who’d lis­ten, prompt­ing another thread of conversation.

“Which one?”

“‘Bas­togne’, my favourite one, where they’re being bom­barded by artillery end­lessly in the for­est, and there aren’t any offi­cers around, and there are no resupplies […]

On Day 4 of the 5 Day ATEC Exer­cise, we came across the car­casses of some ani­mals, decom­posed enough for us not to fig­ure out what ani­mals they had been. Not that we’d be experts at what kind of ani­mals they’d been, because ‘Aus­tralia only got three kinds of ani­mals — kan­ga­roo, koala and cow’.

Not […]

“Atten­tion, atten­tion… 15% off all kevlar hel­mets at tent #27… Hurry, hurry…”

Out­side the tent I shared with six­teen other sol­diers at Samuel Hill Camp was a loud­speaker that blared out announce­ments about every twenty min­utes, ask­ing this sol­dier and that to report to where at when. Very annoying […]

But reservist train­ing just might.

The aver­age NSman (the offi­cial name for ‘reservist’ since 1992, but sel­dom used out­side Min­def) gets called up for standby duties and train­ing stints until he’s around 32, now that the ‘train­ing cycle’ has been short­ened to 10 years.

I’m 36 and have just com­pleted the worst three weeks’ […]

Small talk over lousy cof­fee and sweet cakes at Samuel Hill Camp, Shoal­wa­ter Bay Training Area.

“Eh, what’s that super­hero called ah?“
“Which one?“
“Neh, that one?“
“Which one?“
“That one lah, can­not see him one?“
“Which one?“
“That one lah! Trans­par­ent Guy!“
[…]

Hero shot: It’s all in the gear

Non-hero shot: Queue­ing in the canteen

“Eh, take pic­ture of me and mms my girl­friend, can?”

“OK, how come your phone cannot?”

“Dunno lah. Take for me can?”

“OK…”

“Wait, wait. Dowan already. Take in can­teen not hero […]