It is now Saturday arvo (local) we left HQ 35 hours ago, I got out of my bed 45 hours ago and as we walk up the ramp from the plane at Adelaide airport, we spot our contacts. Brilliant, they came through security to meet us, even before we get to the baggage hall. Handshakes and hugs, a few photo’s: all good. Then they ask us to do a ‘piece to camera’; brutal. It’s hard enough to remember who we are, never mind talk coherently about why we are here, and what we expect!
We arrive at the Forward Operating Base (FOB) for the Operation. It’s the Lobethal Wildlife Park centre: kitchen, showers a big common room for sleeping, a courtyard outside (also for sleeping***) and a BBQ area (obvs). It’s busy as its Saturday is ‘changeover’ day: the operation is in week-long rolling waves: we are wave 3. The common room is full, so is the courtyard, so we sleep in tents outside. The tent (big military thing) is leaking, yep that’s right it is raining. So our first act is to stretch a tarpaulin over it…
We keep powering on in an attempt to beat the jet-lag, and volunteer ourselves to go to the opening brief; a 2 hour piece about the charity, its roots, how it operates, what it does etc, etc. Stuff we knew from a UK perspective – so it was optional, but it seemed a good way of building a relationship with our new team-mates. Boy, that was a long 2 hours. It wasn’t the brief, but the tiredness, lots of ‘long blinks’ and gave myself whiplash a couple of times as I woke with a start! They were great though and very understanding: we weren’t seen as being ‘blah-d roood poms’ as I feared, just understandably tired.
Food that night was great; the Adelaide ‘chapter’ of the Military Motorcyle Club lay on a BBQ. I know it wasn’t specifically to welcome us, but was there another first meal to have?
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