Good sports on deployment

ABET Shane Suckling runs along the beach with some of the children from Atori. HMAS Ipswich visited the tiny village to take part in a Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands Open Day.

HMAS Brunei’s ABSN David Gordon presents the game ball to the village children after a hard beach match. Photo: ABBM Adam Pownall

HMAS Brunei

What do you do when you’re waiting on a beach for the Army to roll up? You start kicking a ball around and see who turns up.

That’s what the ship’s company of HMAS Brunei (LCDR Jeff Williams) did while beached on Guadalcanal during an Operation Anode task.

Kids from the local village quickly got into the swing and gave the Brunei lads a sound thrashing. ABBM Michael Carroll claimed the opposition’s youth, coupled with the home ground advantage, came through on the day.

The game ball was presented to the kids who were absolutely stoked.

Brunei got back to the more serious amphibious side of the task and embarked the Army ready for the next challenge.

Cool change in Solomons

HMAS Ipswich

By MIDN Michael Newman

At a glance it was like any anchorage in the Solomon Islands – smiling children paddling dugouts, pristine blue water and a pervasive ambience of relaxation.

Unbeknownst to the sporting contingent from HMAS Ipswich (LCDR Michael Doherty), this mood was to prove as treacherous as the coral that adorned the surrounding islands.

Primed for action on the sporting field, these heroes of Op Anode faced their toughest challenge yet as they battled for honour and survival in the ‘do or die’ round robin soccer and touch football tournament.

Armed with size, strength and a happy-go-lucky temperament, the team from Patrol Boat 209 was bewitched by the smiling inhabitants of the tropical paradise known as Atori.

Weeks of training on the quarterdeck had firmed the muscles, but minds were too easily seduced by the proffered friendship.

At the end of the competition, as players lay exhausted on the field bathing in self-induced pools of sweat and tears, it seemed all was lost. They trudged away from the arena with heavy hearts and sunburnt shouders.

But they did not return directly to HMAS Ipswich. Rather, to cool both bodies and a sense of despair, all proceeded to the beach.

Upon departing some hours later, through a throng of smiling and laughing children it dawned that perhaps all had achieved something to be proud of after all, albeit with increasingly painful sunburn.

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