Life in the 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 ,
Betty