Life in The Australian Army.

Life in the Australian Army - Brilliant!!

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  station - tell them to get in bloody quick smart before the jobs are all gone! I wuz a bit slow in settlin down at first, because ya don't hafta get  outta bed until 6am. But I Iike  sleeping in now, cuz all ya  gotta do before brekky is  make ya bed andshine ya boots and clean ya uniform. No bloody horses to get in, no calves to feed, no troughs to clean - nothin'!! Ya haz gotta showerthough,but its not so  bad, coz there's lotsa hot water and even a light to see what ya doin! At brekky ya get cereal, fruit  and eggs but there's no kangaroo steaks or goanna stew like wot Mum makesYou 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 bullock 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 abloody dingo's arse 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 p...!! 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 truckwhen you reload! Sometimes ya gotta wrestle with the city boys and I gotta be real carefulcoz 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 eitherand 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 blokescarried 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 lovin daughter, SUSAN  XXX