By
Andrew Stackpool
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LAC
Ian Muirhead at work.
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Photo
by Andrew Stackpool
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SGT
Barry Pleasance
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MANY
children have followed their parents into an Air Force career.
A father following his son into the service is far less common,
but that is the case with Leading Aircraftman Ian Muirhead, an
airfield lighting maintainer at RAAF Base Tindal.
LAC Muirhead has been in the Air Force for two years. He is a
direct entry electrician with a varied career. His son is Sergeant
Barry Pleasance, a senior tradesman with No. 92 Wing’s logistic
operations at RAAF Base Edinburgh.
“I got my trade qualifications a while back and worked for a
while,” LAC Muirhead said. “Since then I worked in a nursing home
for a couple of years, was involved in fostering children and
was also a Baptist minister, so I’ve got qualifications in aged
care nursing and the ministry as well.
“I love my trade work and always wanted to go back to it. I was
down at Amberley and had a look round. “I liked it so I thought
I’d join. At first I thought I’d be too old but they were short
of electricians and bumped the age limit up and I just squeezed
in.”
He and other members of the Air-field Lighting Section at Tindal
have had a busy period of late because of the high demands of
the recent Exercises Pitch Black and Predators Gallop and, earlier
this year, Exercise Aces North.
During Predators Gallop, LAC Muirhead and his colleagues had to
provide and maintain lighting for a contingent of US Marines who
were accommodated in tents.
He is enjoying Tindal, his first posting, and has been able to
utilise his ministry background in the Katherine community. While
he acknowledges the relative isolation, this does not bother him.
“I’ve put in for Learmonth as they have a bit of surf there,”
he said. “I started surfing when I was 16 – a mid-teen crisis
– in Western Australia and in between the footy surfed along the
coast on weekends. “I still have a Malibu board at home down south
and the surf has called.”
LAC Muirhead played football until he turned 31 and told his son
he’d never equal that.
SGT Pleasance just turned 32 – and is still playing football.
“He beat me again,” LAC Muirhead laughed. As for the rank difference
between them, one thing will never alter:
“He’s still my son,” LAC Muirhead said.
