Features

Long road home

Taking his cricket bat and going home ... a Flight Lieutenant prepares to board his Hornet for the flight home after the successful deployment to the Middle East. Photo by SGT W. Guthrie

By FLTLT Christine Bradley

Hate moving house and the rigmarole of completing inventories, packing, unpacking and all the associated running around?

Well, imagine cleaning, packing and loading the abundance of gear needed to support about 250 people and 14 F/A-18 Hornets for three months in the desert – all the while battling 50-plus-degree heat.

That is just what the hard-working operators with the F/A-18 Hornet equipment area had to do before the contingent came home last week. With multiple C-130 Hercules, Boeing 707s and 767s, C-17s and Antinovs to load, it was a gargantuan task.

As the process of preparing to return continued, Corporal Hayden Miller, a supplier with the Combat Support Squadron with the F/A-18 Hornets, said: “There are mountains of equipment still to pack, even though there has been a lot already sent back.”

A colleague, Corporal Darren Masterman, said the task had been “a big job”.

“We’ve been cleaning for about eight days and there is still a lot more to go,” he said.

Before the packing was completed, all items had to be cleaned, with every nook and cranny hosed and dried out to ensure it met quarantine standards.

Once the equipment had been packed on to pallets it was wrapped in plastic pallet covers to protect it from the all-too-common, swirling dust storms that regularly accosted the Middle East air base where the Hornets were located.

For the airmen and women supporting logistics with the F/A-18 deployment, there had been a range of challenges, as CPL Miller explained.

“The hours were pretty long and the heat in the deployable warehouse pushed the thermometer off the scale the other day. We’ve also had to adapt to a lot of different roles, from purchasing and distribution, to managing explosive ordnance and aircraft parts, to providing bus drivers,” he said.

Nonetheless, along with the inevitable challenges such a deployment brings, it has had its highlights, as Aircraftsman Jason Evans described.

“Meeting all the different people from around Australia and the Coalition forces has been a high point, in particular the ones working with Air Movements who we’ve had the most to do with,” he said.

While the experience overall has been a positive one for many, there is still nowhere like home. “I’m just looking forward to seeing my family and moving in to my new house,” AC Evans said.

Before the return of the F/A-18 contingent last Thursday, families were looking forward to much anticipated reunions with their loved ones who had been deployed.

CPL Miller’s family was to drive all the way from Victoria to Queensland to meet him, which he described as “a really nice surprise”.

It might have been a huge job but with every pallet that was cleaned and packed, it brought the end one step closer and home within sight.