Our People in QLD
Gerry White - Gladstone
A Tannum Sands man has proved you can’t keep a good man down.
56 year old local Gerry White is a qualified ambulance officer and Crew Captain for the emergence response team at Boyne Island Aluminium Smelter.
But for the next few months he is an infantryman serving in East Timor with the International Stabilisation Force, helping the local security forces develop to a point where they will take full responsibility for the nation’s security.
Gerry first moved to Australia for several years in 1979, and then finally made Australia his home in 1999.
Gerry served in the New Zealand Army in the early 1970s. When , and in 2003 he watched his eldest daughter Kylie march of the Army Recruit Training Centre parade ground at Kapooka, NSW.
It was then that he realised he still had the soldier instincts, so he decided to join the Australian Army Reserve.
“At my age this was a bit of a challenge — that I thought I could beat!” he said.
“The Army brings out your resolve, and if that fails your mates will get you through.”
In East Timor he drives his section’s infantry mobility vehicle and gets to see a lot of the people and the countryside.
“The people here have very little but are so very happy with what they have,” he said.
“They are a lovely people with a very lovely country.”
Gerry is on his first deployment having seen Kylie off to serve in East Timor in 2008 and younger daughter Tara serve in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009.
“We had great pre-deployment training for East Timor, which was all new to me,” he said.
“Being a Reservist and getting the chance to make a difference over here is what joining the Army is all about.
“Also, the mates you make in the Army are mates for life simply because they live and breathe the same as you do.
“We all go through the good times as well as the bad; we know what no sleep is like and what bad food is.
“We face everything together, and we achieve good things together.
“There just isn’t anything else like this in the world.”