One Life One Chance Read online

  A vital service to the remote communities was the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS). These guys were on call from Mount Isa for any emergency: they would have a doctor or paramedic in the air and on their way to a remote cattle station within minutes of being called. I am truly grateful for these heroic people more than any others because without their help, I would have lost my mum when I was a kid instead of having her by my side today.

  It was in the very early hours, just after midnight, that my mother’s appendix ruptured on Lorraine cattle station, many hours’ drive from the closest emergency service. If we had to drive her to a hospital she would not have made it halfway, that was certain. The Royal Flying Doctors were called and after giving us some immediate things to do to help her they were in the air and en route to us.

  The station had an airstrip that had been carved into the red dirt and even though it wasn’t exactly Boeing 747 ready it was just enough for light aircraft, or so we hoped. Before the plane arrived we had to prepare the runway. At night kangaroos moved onto the strip to drain the remaining heat out of the earth, so we had to drive up and down many times to ensure that the landing area was kangaroo-free for their approach.

  The next problem was lighting; we had to fill empty tins and coffee cans with a mixture of petrol and diesel and place these at intervals all the way around the landing area. We would then have every available vehicle on the station park around the airstrip with their headlights illuminating as far out as possible. Both of these combined would provide just enough light to give the pilot the best chance of landing safely.

  The plane arrived and completed a fly-by to scare off any remaining kangaroos and to check the illumination of the area. We found out later that the pilot wasn’t happy with the lighting and that he had a lot of trouble seeing the ground, yet in true Australian style he brought the plane in anyway and landed it perfectly on this patch of red dirt in the middle of nowhere.

  Mum was loaded on board and given a healthy dose of morphine, so much so that all she recalls is feeling like she was having an amazing foot massage all the way to hospital. The plane was turned around and took off without incident into the darkness. The RFDS saved my mother’s life that night and I will be forever grateful to the brave pilots who took a chance and got her out.

  A good education is essential in life and even though my sister and I were in the middle of nowhere we still managed to get one. With all the kids spread throughout the most remote regions of outback Australia there is a schooling program called the school of distance education and it is all controlled via the radio.

  Imagine a teacher sitting in a small radio-shack room, far away in the regional city of Mount Isa, which is on the border of the Northern Territory and Queensland. From there the teacher can broadcast across the desert for hundreds of kilometres, reaching any station with a radio and all of the kids who need a teacher. Your textbooks and work pads are sent out from the city at the start of the year. Every morning at a designated time we would turn on the radio and wait for class to begin.

  The radio would crackle to life and the teacher in Mount Isa would start the class by asking across the wire, ‘Who is here today?’ We would all say our names one by one and the teacher would write down her roll call and then away we would go with a normal primary school curriculum.

  I remember mine was always a female teacher and she would usually ask all of us to tell a story at the beginning of the class, like a show-and-tell type of scenario. I realise now that it was probably a great way just to get kids comfortable on the radio and I really enjoyed the stories the other kids would tell. From fishing and hunting to working with the cattle, we were all just country kids not knowing any other way of life and loving it.

  Classes on the air would typically run for an hour, this was unless you were fortunate enough to have a radio signal dropout. Any technical failure, to a country kid itching to get outside, was like getting an early jail release. Otherwise, at the end of the class, one by one all the kids would say goodbye and bring to an end our session for the day.

  School of distance education isn’t the most in-depth form of learning but with a tireless mother like mine and her home school program running side by side with it, I was getting an education just as good, if not better than the public school system of the cities. What it also does is give otherwise cut-off kids a chance to get their basic reading, writing and mathematics skills locked in, and if you ask me, that’s all we really need.

  As soon as the radio was placed back on its hook I was out the door and heading off towards the cattle yards to help the cowboys with their work. As a kid I would never wear shoes, no matter where I went, but when I wanted to go and work with the men, Mum would hold me up long enough to make me put my boots on. I can still remember those few minutes it took to pull on those boots being torturous, because in my head boots were the craziest waste of time and any hold up was hell.

  The cattle yards were where the processing of all the cattle took place and were rough, wild and dirty places to be. In Australia people who start working with cattle are known as jackaroos, for men, and jillaroos for women, and once fully qualified they become ringers. They are all tough people working through a range of jobs from cutting off the horns, ear tagging, vaccinating and branding each beast. The person in charge was known as a head stockman and was typically the toughest of them all. I would stand on the top row of the fence and watch the men and women at work, always keen to lend a hand but mindful of how easily you could get kicked or crushed in the yard.

  The indigenous people of Australia, the Aboriginal people, have a long-standing attachment to the land. They can survive off the land, eating bush tucker, flourishing where other people would perish, and the men from these tribes were part of station life. They were a quiet bunch of guys while tending to the work of the day and would get most animated when one of their favourite foods was offered up for lunch.

  One of the jobs in the yards was the removal of the testicles from young weaners before they had a chance to breed. These cattle nuts were removed with a knife and thrown onto a hotplate to be cooked up for everyone to enjoy, and the ones that enjoyed them the most were the Aboriginals. A few of the older veteran workers had tried the oyster-like delicacies before but almost everyone agreed that it wasn’t a taste they could enjoy daily. If you ever have a chance to give them a go make sure they are cooked all the way through. The only thing worse than a testicle for lunch is a raw one.

  My sister Kim is a year older than me and when we were both nearing the end of our primary school education my parents understood what had to come next. Secondary learning was going to be needed, which the radio could not provide. So with our best interests in mind, my parents packed up the entire house once again and moved out of the desert to a coastal town on the east coast of Australia.

  It was a 1700-kilometre journey before we arrived at the town of Forrest Beach in Far North Queensland. I was enrolled at Ingham State High School and I caught the bus to school and back every day. Coming from the bush, where it was just my sister and me, to walking into a school with 700 kids was a massive shock to the system. These were not country kids, we had no common ground, we listened to different music, and at first it was a major struggle for me to make friends.

  I was carrying the baby fat of a kid and was bullied for being tubby for the next two years at Ingham High; wearing my cowboy hat to school for the first few months didn’t really help with my social standing either. When that glorious hormone of maturity shot its way through my system, I grew in height, lost the excess weight and began to train every day.

  As my social skills and athletic ability improved, a group of friends grew around me who are still with me to this day. After playing my first season of rugby league I became captain of the side, and as I developed this enthusiastic approach to compete in every sport available, I also became the sports captain for the school.

  After a rough beginning at Ingham High I took it upon myself to beat u
p every bully who had ever taunted me in those early years. I’d like to say it was out of some desire for a noble deed but it wasn’t. It was pure revenge and it felt great at the time to take my anger out on someone who made a country kid’s life hell. I had earned myself a reputation as a nice guy who should not be messed with and I was content with that.

  All in all my high school years and city life were exactly what I needed to open my eyes to the world. I started to dream of adventure and as graduation approached I began to think about what my next step would be. Even though I had earned the grades to apply for university it didn’t interest me in the slightest, neither did following in my father’s footsteps and becoming a tradesman.

  I was seventeen, young, ambitious, seeking adventure and didn’t have a clue what I wanted in life. What institution would take me?

  CHAPTER 2

  ARMY STRONG

  …

  My great-grandfather on my mum’s side served with the Australian Light Horse Regiment in World War I, a horse-mounted infantry unit used extensively in Turkey and Egypt. My grandfather on my dad’s side was involved in World War II as an aircraft technician maintaining and repairing British aircraft fighting in Europe. I have always respected the history of military service in my family and felt honoured to be part of the lineage of such brave and patriotic men.

  In Queensland, high school begins at grade 8 and finishes at grade 12. Upon enrolment we were asked to fill out a questionnaire that was to be placed into a time capsule and opened upon graduation. ‘Who is the prettiest girl in school?’ was one of the questions on the list and there was ‘What occupation are you going to choose?’. I was thirteen years old when I answered that question, bursting with youthful pride and dreams of grandeur, writing ARMY in big block letters.

  The idea of joining the military marinated during my high school years and was always at the forefront of my thoughts. During school I was playing lots of rugby league, competing in cross-country running, fishing and camping most weekends. I was absorbed with trying to get a girlfriend and generally doing what teenage boys do. Upon graduation we opened the time capsules from five years earlier – two answers to the questions remained the same. The prettiest girl in school hadn’t changed and neither had my feelings towards a career with the Army. I enlisted in the Australian Infantry at seventeen years of age. I was too young to enlist myself directly and needed to have my parents’ permission and signature on the enrolment forms. Mum and Dad are both patriotic Australians, and even though it was hard on Mum to let me go so young, they gave me their permission and their full support.

  Before the hangover of the graduation parties had cleared, I had taken two flights and was sitting on a bus full of new recruits heading towards the town of Wagga Wagga in rural New South Wales. Just outside of town lay the training camps for the entire Army. It didn’t matter what unit you were enlisting in, whether it was Catering Corps or the Infantry, everyone was put together for the initial six weeks of basic training. I looked around at the silent faces sitting on the bus and wondered if everyone was as nervous as I was. They all seemed much older than me and no-one seemed to be showing it.

  When the bus pulled up in fading daylight a uniformed man stepped on board. He was dressed in pressed green camouflage clothing and with his immaculate appearance and thousand-yard stare he was very intimidating. After a brief pause as he took a moment to lock eyes with all of us, he bellowed out our first set of orders. We were told to get off the bus, grab our bag with our left hand and carry it off the ground as we followed another intimidating staff member. We were ordered to walk in two straight lines towards an area called the muster hall. Carrying a bag that had been packed in the belief it would be pulled on wheels proved to be a real challenge but there was no way I’d let it touch the ground. I gritted my teeth through the burning pain in my left shoulder and stumbled onwards.

  Some new recruits couldn’t carry their bags off the ground for more than a few paces and every time their bag touched the ground a bombardment of verbal abuse from circling staff soon followed. A look of terror covered the faces of the timid civilians getting screamed at for no other reason than to drive home the fact that we now belonged to an institution and not to ourselves. That day I heard for the first time a sentence I would hear repeatedly in the coming weeks: ‘You joined us, we didn’t join you’. It never seemed to lose its impact.

  Once we were together inside the muster hall a roll call was taken and we were sorted into our platoons. A platoon is typically made up of thirty soldiers however ours were slightly bigger, the staff knowing not all of us would still be there in six weeks’ time. I looked around and noticed Greek, Chinese, Aboriginal, Lebanese and European faces, all filled with the same look of fear and apprehension. We were a group of young people from different cultural backgrounds thrown together, all wanting to serve our country. Once sorted into platoons we were marched over to the barracks and given sleeping arrangements for the next six weeks. The barracks were split into ten rooms each containing four recruits. At one end of the hall was a fire escape exit and at the other end was a shower/ toilet block and the staff office. Late that first night we were told to get to sleep: without meeting my new roommates I jumped into the rock-hard single bed with sheets tucked in tighter than a tourniquet and lay quiet. Sleep didn’t come easy and I could feel the other three guys in my room also lying awake. As the hours ticked by with my imagination running wild about what was going to happen the following day, I dozed off.

  At 6 am, forgetting where I was, a spray of commands and insults from the staff shocked me into reality. I was a new recruit of 15 Platoon and we were ordered out into the hallway and told to stand against the walls, facing our teammates on the opposite side. ‘Back straight, toes forward, chin up, eyes forward, don’t look at me’, the commands didn’t stop. The abuse was endless and intense and I was ordered to go and grab the sheets off my bed and return with them draped over my left shoulder. Returning, clutching the sheets and standing there half naked the barrage continued. Streams of information were forced upon us: how we fold our socks, how we make our beds, how to shave, shower and how to stand. Every little detail was covered as we were indoctrinated into the system. Running through my head was ‘You joined us, we didn’t join you’.

  During basic training a platoon is allocated a team of seasoned corporals. They would train and mould us into something resembling soldiers in just six weeks. This is done in a very systematic and proven way. First they must break down a platoon physically and mentally, stripping away personal ego and bringing the team together. If they made it hard enough the only way we could survive was to work together as one unit. Once a team hits rock bottom they could begin to build us up as one, utilising new skills, strengths and mottos driven into our brains daily by the military machine. If the corporals have done their job effectively a smaller group will remain who have survived the baptism of fire and could be called soldiers.

  There was so much information to take in at once that we made mistake after mistake and the staff were waiting to give us our punishments. Hundreds of push-ups and stress-position holds, corporals coming within an inch of my face and unloading verbal abuse. Spit would be flying into my eyes as they simply repeated the tasks over and over again until we got it right. At one stage we got dressed and undressed going through the morning routine at least twenty times. It would have been borderline hilarious if I wasn’t pouring sweat and desperately trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.

  After the first day of endless ‘beasting’ (punishments) we had a super-tight schedule to stick to. The morning routine consisted of being woken up by a corporal yelling or Metallica music blaring out over the barracks’ speaker system. We would need to make our bed, shave, brush our teeth, get dressed, straighten up our locker and be out in the hallway ready to go in under twenty minutes.

  One time we didn’t make the twenty-minute limit, so we continued to repeat the morning routine for the next three hours until t
he corporals were certain we had it nailed. Every recruit got a rash after shaving a dozen times, and even though I didn’t have a whisker on my chin at seventeen, I still had to shave with the other guys. One morning when a fellow recruit’s bed wasn’t made to the staff’s exact specification, his mattress was hurled out of the third-storey window crashing into the garden below. Every day while we were formed up in the hallway we had to sing the national anthem as a team at the top of our lungs. The first verse everybody already knew but we also had to learn the second verse, rarely heard before. It always sounded terrible yet singing out loud in front of everyone played a vital role in breaking down self-esteem issues and getting your voice primed for repeating commands.

  I was the youngest recruit there by a few years and I was handling the orders and rules fairly well. I had only just completed my schooling and was living at home where there were plenty of rules and restrictions already, so I adjusted easily. Some of the other guys reached their limits early on in the breaking-down phase and by the second week we had lost four recruits. One guy repeatedly ran at top speed into his steel locker in an attempt to kill himself and was medically discharged. Every time a recruit quit it made me a little bit more determined to keep going, something about their weakness made me stronger. I would never do anything to make someone quit and I’d help out everybody I could, but when they gave up and couldn’t take any more I turned away and kept pushing myself onward.

  The physical side of the training was what I was enjoying the most. I had prepared myself well in my final year at home with constant sport, strength training and an ever-increasing distance of running. Dad had bought me some weights to use in the shed, welded a pull-up bar to the roof and made a boxing bag out of an old mattress rolled up and taped together. Anytime we had a birthday party or gathering at home it would inevitably end in pull-up competitions and arm wrestling championships. In Army training our PT sessions (physical training) involved weights circuits, running intervals, pool sessions, pack marches and sometimes a smash session of everything thrown in together. We had to complete the ‘beep test’ of just running as one of our first fitness classes. It utilises shuttle runs between markers following a series of beeps, starting very slow and over time getting faster until you are sprinting between the markers. If you failed to make it to the marker before the next beep you were out and given your score. That first session I was the last man sprinting and took out the highest score.