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 yagotta 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 shave 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!!
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 its not firing back at ya like
the Johnsons did when our big scrubber bull got into
their prize cows before the Ekka last year! 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, Phil, Jack, Boori, Steve and Muzza all at once
like we do at home
after the muster.Turns out I'm not a bad boxer either and I've only
been beaten by this one bloke from the Engineers, 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