This is a little long, and you have to read it slowly to digest it, but it is
great stuff. Enjoy it. Be patient and read it thoroughly.
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’!!
Blokes 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!!
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 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!
All ya gotta do is make yourself comfortable and hit the target - its 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,
Jill