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Aviators fly home
By Capt Gabrielle Parker
Edition 1173, August 23, 2007 |
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| Warm welcomes: WO2 Duncan Reid is met by his wife, Liz, 13-year-old son Conner and 10-year-old daughter Lily. |
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Cfn Erin Babbs is greeted by his three-year-old daughter Indeah at Darwin Airport.
Photos by Gnr Shannon Joyce |
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AFTER four months of reconnaissance activities in Timor Leste, 30 Darwin soldiers were thrilled to arrive home to greet their families at Darwin Airport.
1 Avn Regt Operations Officer Maj Andrew Mitchell was at the airport on July 19 to welcome home the soldiers.
“These Darwin soldiers have done an outstanding job. They provided the Joint Task Group an eye in the sky, gathering imagery by day and night,” Major Mitchell said.
Supporting the operation was helicopter maintainer WO2 Duncan Reid. On his fourth rotation to Timor Leste since 2000, WO2 Reid said he had been looking forward to coming home.
His wife Liz and their two children, Conner, 13, and Lily, 10, were thrilled to see him home.
Returning from his first deployment overseas, Cfn Erin Babbs said his time away was a great learning experience but that the best bit was coming home to his children.
His two daughters, nine-year-old Zara and three-year-old Indeah, raced to greet their dad with a hug.
His wife Lee said she was relieved to have him home.
“It was a long time to have him away and each week seemed like a month,” she said.
Also returning was 1 Avn Regt’s only female Army pilot, Lt Berneigh Phillips, who said that while she didn’t have a family in Darwin she was looking forward to reuniting with friends and her 12-month-old Aussie terrier Chilli. “The deployment was a good experience.
We got to do lots of flying over the Timor countryside,” she said.
The maintainers and aircrew were based in Dili from March with four of Darwin’s Kiowas as part of the Timor-Leste Aviation Group, which also included Black Hawks, New Zealand Iroquois and about 120 coalition soldiers.
Thirty-five soldiers have deployed to Timor-Leste as part of rotation five, replacing the soldiers that returned home. |
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