Back in the bad old days of the 1980s it used to be a 13-week course. You used to do 3 x 4 weeks of training and a week of drill for graduation. To determine where a recruit sat in the food chain, they used to wear coloured tabs on their epaulettes – red for […]

At the end of 1978 the whole battalion was doing their specialised courses as normal. Having just marched in, I missed out on all the courses so the battalion had organised a five-day adventure training for everyone who was not doing courses at the end of the year. We went over to North Stradbroke Island. […]

In 1978 I was with A Coy 8/9 RAR on exercise out the back of Cooktown as an enemy force against SASR. I was with 1 Plt. The company had an attachment of 2/4 RAR Recon and surveillance. Well, while there one of the 2/4 guys, Pete Casey, got a leech up the eye of […]

His name was Dean Presley Rule. We were gunners together in 10 Pl D Coy 1 RAR in the ’80s. He then went to Recon Pl. A great bloke but Blue Gleeson, the CSM of D Coy at the time, didn’t think so. Blue’s welcome to our coy was “You blokes better not be like […]

Being back in the barracks in the early 1980s was normally always boring. With Labor in power, there were the usual Defence Force cuts, so little ammunition to waste or money for adventure-training stuff. There was some initial excitement when The Falklands started, but it was soon apparent that the Brits were going it alone […]

It was ’78 or ’79, not sure, but 8/9 RAR was having a ranges week at Greenbank and the battalion had taken over several of the areas out the back where the kitchens etc were located. Once the day’s activities were over, the battalion went back to the camp area, cleaned weapons, had dinner etc […]

In 1986 I was chosen as the Infantry Signals Corporal to the Raven Trails Team to test the new Plessey Radio Communication System. Gerry Bruegum was the detachment sergeant and we had two great diggers from 6 RAR Signal Platoon. On our first trial we were out at Charleville Showgrounds before heading out on our […]

It was 6th August 1986. I was sitting at my desk doing something important as only a good 2LT would do, when in bounded one of my diggers… It was none other than the famous Rufus Rule. He was still only a lid in those days so his fame was still to spread… “Happy Hiroshima […]

In 8/9 RAR in the late ’80s me and my mate, Dicko were finally allowed to move out of the C Coy lines. The only place we could get was this shitbox nicknamed ‘The Pad’. We tried everywhere to get a rental place but no one would rent us a place as we were so […]

In 1979 Rick Piggott, Peter Haynes and I stole one of those yellow RAAF bikes on arrival at RCB Malaysia as we were sick of walking down to the BC bar or all the way up to either the Boatie Tigers Club or Danny’s Bar. We would lock it in a toilet cubicle and just […]