Australian Army

Life in the Australian Army…

Text of a letter from a kid from Eromanga to Mum
and Dad. (For those of you not in the know,
Eromanga is a small town, west of Quilpie in
the far south west of Queensland)
Dear Mum & Dad,

I am well. Hope youse are too. Tell me big
brothers Doug and Phil that the Army is better
than workin’ on the farm – tell them to get in
bloody quick smart before the jobs are all gone!

I wuz a bit slow in settling down at first,
because ya don’t hafta get outta bed until 6am.
But I like sleeping in now, cuz all ya gotta do
before brekky is make ya bed and shine ya boots
and clean ya uniform.

No bloody cows to milk, no
calves to feed, no feed to stack – nothin’!! Ya
haz gotta shower though, but its not so bad, coz
there’s lotsa hot water and even a light to see
what ya doing!

At brekky ya get cereal, fruit and eggs but
there’s no kangaroo steaks or possum stew like
wot Mum makes.

You don’t get fed again until noon
and by that time all the city boys are buggered
because we’ve been on a ‘route march’ – geez its
only just like walking to the windmill in the
back paddock!!

This one will kill me brothers Doug and Phil
with laughter. I keep getting medals for shootin’
- dunno why.

The bullseye is as big as a bloody
possum’s bum and it don’t move and it’s not
firing back at ya like the Johnsons did when our
big scrubber bull got into their prize cows
before the Ekka last year!

All ya gotta do is
make yourself comfortable and hit the target -
it’s a piece of piss!! You don’t even load your
own cartridges, they comes in little boxes, and
ya don’t have to steady yourself against the
rollbar of the roo shooting truck when you reload!

Sometimes ya gotta wrestle with the city boys
and I gotta be real careful coz they break easy -
it’s not like fighting with Doug and Phil and
Jack and Boori and Steve and Muzza all at once
like we do at home after the muster.

Turns out I’m not a bad boxer either and it
looks like I’m the best the platoon’s got, and
I’ve only been beaten by this one bloke from the
Engineers – he’s 6 foot 5 and 15 stone and three
pick handles across the shoulders and as ya know
I’m only 5 foot 7 and eight stone wringin’ wet,
but I fought him till the other blokes carried me
off to the boozer.

I can’t complain about the Army – tell the boys
to get in quick before word gets around how
bloody good it is.

Your loving daughter,
Sheila