During the month of November 2008 the Green Knights of VMFA(AW)-121 (my squadron) support Aces North, a war exercise with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), flying out of Tindal Air Base in the Northern Territory of Australia. On the fifth of the month we began our transit down, stopping the night in Guam and then proceeding to our destination. My own trip down under was little disappointing because instead of flying in the backseat of a Hornet, I rode in the passenger cabin of the tanker. While it was interesting to see refueling from the tanker’s perspective, and the seats were much more comfortable than a Hornet cockpit, I would have liked to see Indonesia and Papua New Guinea pass by the canopy, and to have flown myself in country (in a manner of speaking). However, it was significant for two reasons: first, I crossed the Equator for the first time; second, I got to spend a night in Darwin.
Darwin is on the northern coast of Australia; Tindal is about 300 km (115 miles) inland to the south. The tanker I rode carried most of our squadron’s gear, and had to stop at the port city so our pack-up could be inspected by AQIS, the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service. Everything was opened up and sprayed with pesticide; the inspectors checked for any organic material like wood, tobacco, food of any kind, dirt, and so on. We had been forewarned of the inspection, so we had made sure our stuff was clean and it passed though the inspection quickly. Since the road to Tindal is poor and not very well lit, we decided not to try to negotiate it that night and found billeting aboard the RAAF airbase at Darwin in preparation to drive to Tindal the next morning.
Our accommodations were terrible—closet-sized rooms with two bunk beds, two wall-lockers, one electric socket, and an air conditioner that would only work if the room key was plugged into the face of the unit. There were the bathroom area was a separate building, as was the "common room" which had a single television, drinking fountain, and wireless internet available for $8.00 an hour (Australian). I did get to watch Australian news coverage on the U.S. Presidential election, which was amazingly detailed (and optimistic!) for a foreign news organ. I already knew the results by the time I arrived at my lodging, however, as the AQIS inspectors told us the result of the election when we landed. It seems indeed like the rest of the world thinks our elections a pretty big deal. Due to the lodgings and the suffocating post-election obsession of the news, I was not eager to spend too much time on base. So, shortly after "settling" in, three of my comrades and I took a rented vehicle into downtown Darwin to see the sights.
Darwin has something of a legendary status among American servicemembers. Apparently the locals are quite friendly (in every interpretation of that word) to Americans in general and the city offers enough nightlife and sight-seeing to keep tourists interested. As it is only 12 degrees south of the Equator, it is also very tropical. I was astonished by the many kinds and many colors of foliage around the base and city area. Also, much of the base is built on stilts to account for the flooding that typically occurs during the rainy season. Mindful of the early wake-up in the morning, the four of us settled for a quiet dinner--I enjoyed some savory kangaroo meat, which tasted a bit like steak and a bit like lamb--and a few beers before heading home. Our waitress was also a foreigner to Australia, having emigrated from Scotland, and explained that many Darwin inhabitants are transplants who encounter the city on a vacation or hear about it from friends and decide to move there; essentially, it's Australia's version of San Diego (though it is quite a bit smaller). The most striking thing about our first look at Australia was the fact that aside from the funny accents and the driving on the left side of the road, it seems just like America. The people especially look and act like Americans--and I don't mean that in a pejorative way.
The next day we took the (bad) road into Tindal. It took several hours, and once out of Darwin it proceed roughly straight south through the Outback. The land is flat, reddish, and bare except for short trees with bright green foliage that seem to grow no taller than 12-15 feet in height. Overhead stretches the biggest, clearest sky I have ever seen—clear blue scattered with brilliant white clouds. The temperature climbs through 100 degrees by nine in the morning, and sunlight feels scorching on bare skin. It is amazing: a bit like El Centro; a bit like Eastern Washington; but hotter and palpably more remote than either. In the late afternoon, the heat produces towering cumulous clouds that make sunsets a riot of color. At night, the temperature stays well above 90 degrees, and the constellations are foreign and confusing. I have not yet indentified the Southern Cross; apparently in this month it is very close to the horizon. But that is one of my sightseeing priorities around here.
RAAF Tindal lies southeast of Katharine, Australia, a small town of about 10,000 people. It isn’t a very exciting social scene off base, but the Australian squadrons present for Aces North have so far been very friendly and welcoming. The base facilities are pretty nice—for example, the Officer’s Mess here is much better than a chow hall. Rather than cafeteria-style dining, we order from a menu that usually includes three to four options. The food is excellent and there is always fresh fruit and salad available. The living area is a little more Spartan. We live two to a room in prefabricated housing with a shared bathroom and common room. I was surprised to note that the SINGLE bathroom area contains no urinals and the stalls are all partitioned off by full-length doors. This is because there is no separate facility for males and females (which is apparently standard for the Australian military… when in Rome, and all that), so the male aircrew will share toilets and showers with our three female aircrew. Fortunately, and perhaps unsurpisingly, this has not been an issue - so far everyone has enough common sense and professionalism to spend all their time outside the stalls clothed.
Speaking of bathrooms, I had an odd experience with our bathroom in our classfied, "operations" bunker. Our squadron spaces are divided between two bunkers which are buried, and like our living spaces they have co-ed toilets. The first day I was there, I went to use that facility, and after I was finished I realized that there was a frog at the bottom of the bowl staring up at me. He was about the size of my fist and a very bright green. It was very startling and not quite welcome, as he hadn't been there when I first entered the stall. However, I gather that it isn't all that rare to find animals in the sewage system--apparently the residents of certain areas of base are warned of snakes coming into the toilets (this is especially disturbing considering that the twelve most deadly snakes in the world are indigenous to Australia). And there is certainly an abundance of other, less dangerous wildlife on base: the resident squadron's mascot is the ubiquitous magpie; there are trees filled with thousands of bats the size of small cats (no rhyme intended), looking like large unhealthy fruits in the daylight; and the mini-kangaroos called wallabies congregate on the base parade ground during twilight hours.
Despite the exotic nature of our environment, probably the biggest challenge of this deployment is the flight schedule. The first “go” briefs at 0100 (1:00 AM) for a 0300 takeoff, the second “go” briefs at 0600 for a 0830 takeoff. This kind of schedule makes for some odd hours: aircrew flying the first “go” will go to bed at 1300 (one in the afternoon) for a 2300 wakeup (11:00 AM). The missions look to be very tactical, however, as Aces North is the graduation exercise for the RAAF Weapons School (think Top Gun), and we should get some really good training and experience out of it. There is no doubt that it will be a lot of work, and hopefully we’ll have some time to do some sightseeing as well.
