Mar
Exercise First Strike
This exercise was held on the weekend of 26 – 28 March 2010 and – as always – was for Basic Flight and NCOs. First Strike serves as an introductory camp for our new recruits and gives them a good foundation of team work and basic outdoors skills.
On the Friday night we got sorted nice and early and headed out of Coote Road around 1745hrs – only 15 minutes after our original muster time. We travelled out to Everetts DOC camp by way of two 11 seater vans and a luggage trailer, kindly supplied at a reduced rate by our friends at Handy Rentals. This weekend was also set to be the first camping trip ever for Connor, the Officer’s 3 year old son. Unfortunately he’d had a bit of a stomach bug and threw up in the back of FLTLT Faulknor-Murrell’s van! Luckily we weren’t far away from a rest area (with a tap!) where we could stop and clean him down.
Shortly after we left the rest area, FGOFF Faulknor-Murrell remembered the meat, cheese, milk and lettuce he’d left in the fridge back in the unit. While everyone else organised tents and sorted out supper, he did the 2 hour return trip to town to retrieve said cold items.
Saturday dawned cold and well… dark really. Breakfast was had by starlight and we leaped straight into our first lesson of the day. The standard curriculum ensued, cooker safety, cooking skills, camp hygiene, knot tying, environmental care code, firelighting and camp layout. A very full on day was had by all and when 10pm rolled around there was hardly a peep out of the CDTs who all headed to bed very weary – particularly after the FGOFF’s ear joke!
The NCOs planned a wee surprise for the CDTs first thing in the morning by getting themselves “lost” in dark in the bush behind the camp. FGOFF F-M went immediately and woke up the CDTs, but sadly for the NCOs the females took about 30 minutes to get their faces on. By this time it was almost daylight meaning their awesome hiding spots weren’t that good after all. It still took them a huuuuuge effort to find CPL MacKay who had used his 40 minutes wisely by having a little kip under a tree!
Practical exercises were next, then we moved to have smoko and get our tents packed up as rain threatened. A light drizzle began falling as we got the tents away (damp). We huddled under the nearby bush to have a nice hot lunch before the final clean up. All was going to plan until FGOFF Faulknor-Murrell tried to start the second van… Connor had taken to playing in it for a lot of the weekend and had flattened the battery!! Thanks to some farm-boy ingenuity, CPL MacKay’s suggestion of swapping the battery out of Ma’am’s already started van worked a treat and we were underway… and back at the unit in plenty of time to get the stores washed, sorted and put away and get out of the unit before our 1630 planned finish.
Another successful weekend, thanks to all of the people involved with planning and execution.
