With an AO of 1.8 million square kilometres to keep an eye on, North West Mobile Force (Norforce) soldiers have to be trained in all modes of transport to patrol one of the worlds most harsh and remote environments.

Water operations involving small craft like F470 Zodiacs, which are powered by twin 25 horsepower Mercury engines, make up about 50 per cent of Norforce patrols to resupply, extract and insert patrols.

Capt Mick Doyle said the recent Norforce Small Craft Operators Course was a two week course attended by students from all over the Norforce AO.

“We’ve had guys come from Kimberly Squadron, down Broome way and right across their AO.

We’ve had students come from the northern islands of the Arnhem Squadrons AO and from the mainland over at Nhulunbuy way and Ikubella way,” he said.

“We’ve got guys from Darwin itself, one fellow from Port Keats and another fellow from Katherine.

“We did have some fellows that were due from Borroloolla, however, there was a funeral ceremony down there that precluded them from being able to come.”

The small craft course is run to qualify soldiers in two levels in boat handling, as they train in operations of both F470 Zodiacs and 4.4m Tinnies.

The level one Regional Force Surveillance Unit (RFSU) Small Craft Handler qualification is a basic handler, who is capable of operating the craft safely, under the supervision and direction of a qualified Patrol Commander.

The level two RFSU Small Craft Operator is someone who is trained to use the craft as well as trained in navigation and employment of a craft in a tactical environment.

To obtain a level two qualification students must complete full specialist training over two weeks where they are able to employ the craft as the Coxswain on operations and patrols.

Capt Doyle said 95 per cent of the course students will get a full level two qualification but there would be one or two that may not within the two weeks period.

“They may not achieve the level two purely based on lack of navigational ability and that sort of hamstrings them in some regard. But it doesn’t stop them going on patrol because they can then be a small craft handler under the close supervision of a qualified patrol commander.

“For some of the fellows, numeracy and literacy coastal navigations are quite difficult concepts, so as a result, where they do have problems we do everything in our power to get them past that and some of the guys have actually done quite well when we’ve sat down with them one on one.

“You have to look beyond traditional Army teaching methods in a lot of ways because of the diversity of both cultures and backgrounds in terms of education.

“We understand where the soldiers are coming, from a cultural background point of view, and just getting to know the personalities as we train them. We’ll aim the training to meet the digger.

“We can’t do that for everyone, but we find a lot of communities and a lot of guys from general areas will have very similar considerations. Education, numeracy and literacy are the main problems in a lot of areas and we overcome that in a myriad of different ways – more hands on and verbal testing.

“Common-sense approaches work better than doing the old ‘like this, do that’ and ‘during this lesson you will learn’.

“The guys that use English as a third or fourth language are very smart blokes. And if you pitch the training at the right level you get very good results that would have been missed if you took the traditional military training approach.

“These guys have so much to provide at all levels, they may not be cast from the mould of a regular infantry soldier or do things the way that you would in a battalion. But they make it up in their observation skills, their familiarity of the country, their hands on skills and just the pride in what they do.”

Capt Doyle said that staff often found themselves learning from their students.

“A lot of the fellows that come from remote communities have probably got more tiller time in tinnies and watercraft than any of the instructors could hope to get.

“These guys are out and about in their country on a regular basis either fishing, hunting or working and as a result they have a lot of local area knowledge that any patrol commander would be silly not to take into account. It works better than just going straight off the chart.”

They also carry with them a very good awareness of the tides and seas, based on living in that area and seeing it over the years.

“It’s quite interesting introducing some of these soldiers to the tidal chart when they know by the phases of the moon exactly where the tides are going to be anyway.”

Norforce has the responsibility to patrol the greatest land area of any army surveillance unit in the world and Capt Doyle said there was no other unit in Australia that has got the opportunity to do the things they do.

“Our reserve soldiers have the opportunity to earn their dollars doing a real-time job that flows onto a national surveillance plan, where they’re contributing to the security of this nation.

“They’re doing the lead-up training and qualifying to be able to go on operational patrols to provide surveillance of our coastline and our inland areas.

“This provides, situational awareness to other agencies and Defence, and provide all-encompassing curtain of, ‘Norforce, out there watching.’

“If there are illegal activities, or if there are activities going on out there that shouldn’t be going on, they will be there watching and reporting.

“The fact is, they’re protecting their country.

“They’re getting involved and making a difference.”

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