I've done a decent search of the forum and haven't come across this story yet so I thought it might be helpful to share. It's done the rounds on numerous Australian forums. Mind you, the story is back from sometime in 2002 or earlier and was written by a reservist doing the 45 day course. Since then things have changed, and from my experience with the 28 day course, what recruits now go through has been toned down.

If the mods don't feel the story to be appropriate in any way so be it. I"ll just post the first part (there are 4 parts altogether) for now and if there is no drama as to the content I'll post the rest.

Edit: The guy goes by the name of Brendan Hall.



Civilian to Soldier in 7 weeks

Anyone wanting to join the Australian army, weather it be joining Infantry, armored, catering or band corps, must first endure 7 weeks of training at ARTC (Army recruit training centre) down on the NSW/Victoria border in a place called Kapooka.

The first night at Kapooka is easily the worst. I can only describe what I went through, but I would imagine they do the same process for everyone. You arrive there at about 11pm at night, after a 7 hour bus trip from Sydney. Everyone on the bus is talking and everyone is starting to make new friends and spirits are generally high.

…then you pass through the gates of the base. It’s quite a grand entrance, with 2 large WW2 artillery guns on either side of the roadway and a brass plaque directly ahead saying “BLAMEY BARRACKS”. I noticed that as we drove through the gates, everyone just seemed to go silent, as though they had just realized that after all the talk and bragging about joining the army, they had finally arrived and the time for talk was over.

The bus drove for another 2 minutes and the parked outside a large building, lights on and several silhouetted figures standing outside. Military Police. The bus door opened and one of them stepped on and everyone automatically went rigid. The guy had and air of authority about him so strong it was almost tangible. His first words were “Welcome to ARTC, you stupid shitheads, you’re in my army now and if you f*** with me, I’ll skull-fuck you then throw you in the cells.” His voice cool and calm.
….nobody said a word
“Now get the f*** off the bus”

As soon as we went to move he started screaming “hurry the f*** up” while pushing us out the door. We grabbed out bags from underneath the bus and were quickly herded into the building by another 4 MP’s who were screaming insults at us the whole way. One of the girls wet herself. I remember one of the MP’s yelling at the top of his lungs at me as I was running into the building. “What the f*** are you doing here, you fat, ugly piece of shit. You won’t last 3 days here fuckwit before I have to come and drag your fat ass out the gate, now get the f*** in there.” All I was thinking, as I’m sure everyone else was thinking was how much of a mistake it was coming here and how soon we could leave again.

Once inside the building, they lined us up in 3 rows (or ‘ranks’ as they call it) and one of the MP’s gave us a quick speech on some of the basic policy: No drugs, no sex, how to address various ranks, where we can and can’t go ECT…

Then our platoon sergeant came and got us and marched us down to the building where we would be living for the next 7 weeks. He was a nice guy, calling us ‘team’ and after the thrashing we got from the MP’s, we were glad to find out that not everyone here was as psychotic as them. He told us about himself, what he had done in his career and why he was at ARTC. As he walked us down to ‘the lines’ (the name the army gives to our accommodation) we were all letting out quiet sighs of relief.
I suspected that it was some kind of good cop/bad cop routine, designed to mess with us and my suspicion turned out to be right. No sooner than he has us standing outside the lines, he said “and now I’ll leave you in the hands of my capable staff. Corporals, take over”

…and then it went to hell.

Our 4 corporals, who we never saw standing on the stairs outside the lines then opened up at the top of their lungs “get the f*** up here, put your bag in your left hand and don’t say a f***ing word. You’re in our world now and we won’t hesitate to f*** you up!!!”

It may sound comical now, written down, but trust me, when a 110kg Infantry corporal is shouting at you at 130 db, it loses any kind of humorous value. We all raced up the stairs and entered ‘the lines’.

The lines are basically just a long corridor with rooms branching off on either side. At then end of the corridor there is a small foyer and a big room where all the toilets and showers are.

Next too the doorway to each room there was a piece of paper with our names on it. You had to find your room and stand next to your doorway, still holding your bag in your left hand. The corporals walked up and down the corridor, screaming at us to stand at attention (head up, eyes looking directly to the front, arms locked into the sides, feet together and back straight). We were still holding our bags in our left hand. I was lucky, since I didn’t pack very much and my bag was light, but some of the other guys had these full suitcases weighing a ton. One of the guys dropped his bag on the ground because he couldn’t hold it anymore and immediately all 4 corporals converged on him and screamed their heads off at him, calling him every name under the sun, saying things like “how the f*** are you going to get through this place if you can’t even do a simple thing like hold a bag in your f***ing hand recruit!”
“I’m not sure” was all he could say, no doubt crapping himself.

“You call me CORPORAL, recruit. f***ing CORPORAL!!! You got that in your head, fuckwit!”

“Uh…yes corporal” he said in a timid voice

“What’s the matter with you recruit, can’t you speak loud or something. When you answer me, you will yell it out, motherfucker.”

“YES CORPORAL!”

“Now shut the f*** up, recruit”

That one guy got it worse than any of us that night; the corporals basically used him as a practice dummy so the rest of us would get the idea. He lasted one day then left due to ‘medical reasons’. I felt sorry for the guy.

They then gave us some more talk about some stuff that I can’t quite remember, and then told us to get into bed. We peeled off into our rooms and got into the shitty, 40-year-old beds, but none of us slept a wink.

The next few days were spent with mostly administrative type things: vaccinations, getting all our gear from the Q-store, learning some more basic drill moves and getting introduced to PT (physical training).

Most people dreaded PT lessons, since most PTI’s (Physical Training Instructors) didn’t stop working you until someone either cried, bled or spewed. Luckily I had the foresight to get my fitness right up before I left, so I didn’t have too much of a problem with it, but there were a few people who copped it terribly. Mainly the girls in the platoon and the smokers. If you smoke and want into the army, my advice is to quit before you go to Kapooka. On all the runs, we had the super-mega athletes in a group way in front, then the main body of the platoon in a pack then the smokers in another smaller group straggling behind. The PTI’s go to special lengths to ‘punish’ the smokers by making them do extra PT while the rest of us take breaks. The PTI’s are toned, chiseled and totally buff and their basic philosophy is that your body is your temple, so they hate smokers. (Note: most of the PTI’s are men, but there are a few women and they are total hotties. I used to look forward to PT if I knew one of them was taking us.). Some of the ‘fun’ things you do in PT are:

-Rope climbing (rope burn city, beware)
-RDJ (Run, Dodge, Jump) (basically just a small little obstacle course you have to finish in under 60 seconds)
-Swimming circuits (the PTI’s favourite)
-Interval training (Running, running and more running)
-Core stability training (for those rock hard abs)
-Obstacle course (heaps of fun, but easy to injure yourself)
-Fitness circuits (Every PTI has their own unique way of torturing you)

there is more, but those are the more common ones.

On the second day we went to the armory and got issued our rifles and bayonets. It’s weird just being given this automatic weapon so casually. You haven’t been taught how to use (or even hold) it yet, so your nervous as all hell that you might accidentally do something and shoot somebody (even though all the weapons were clear). It was kind of cool though, and everyone was feeling pretty hardcore, standing around, hanging onto these mean looking rifles. Then we took them back to the armory in our lines and didn’t see them again for another 2 weeks.

I was told that if you make it through the first 2 weeks, you’ll make it through to the end and this certainly held true in our platoon. In the first 2 weeks, 4 people left because of mental burnout and one left from injury which we *suspected* was self inflicted. After 2 weeks it definitely got easier, though not because of any slackening on the part of the staff. It just takes about that long for you to adjust to the military lifestyle. A corporal yelling at you isn’t nearly so bad when you know that the yelling is their expected reaction to something, rather than it taking you by surprise. After 2 weeks you starting to make a few friends in your platoon and by this stage you’ve worked out the daily routine, so you know what to expect and when to expect it.


The first 2-3 weeks are spent mainly in the classroom, learning all kinds of boring crap that my brain automatically discarded, which is why I’m at a loss to tell you about it. The number one-mega-super-golden rule of the classroom is: DON’T FALL ASLEEP…

I’m serious. They work you pretty hard and whenever you sit down you begin to feel drowsy. Believe me; towards the end of an 80 minute lecture about how to use a compass, it’s so hard to stay awake. Drink lots of water and that helps keep you awake, with the downside being that you will want to leave to take a piss (and they don’t let you leave during class. ever). If you do fall asleep, you’re dead, especially if it’s the Platoon Sergeant or Platoon Commander giving the lesson. I’ll leave it at that. DO NOT FALL ASLEEP. As I said before, the classes are pretty boring and the pace is so slow it borders on ridiculous. If the lecturer was giving the lesson to a group of normal-intelligence people, it would take 10 minutes tops, but since there are ALOT of dumbasses in the army, they have to slow the pace down to near-kinder garden speed. Despite this, there are always a few of the morons at the end of the lesson scratching their empty heads, while the rest of us are almost in tears from the tedium of it all. It’s understandable, since the army has to teach at the rate of the slowest person, but it gets oh-so boring if you’re even a little bit brainy.

The Food is actually pretty good, despite what some people say. Of course, it’s not as good as ‘mum’s cooking’, but what ever is, hey? Breakfast was my favourite meal, since they array a plethora of bacon, eggs, beans, spaghetti and whatever was left over from the previous night’s dinner (usually pasta or something). Alternatively, there is a bar witch has almost every cereal known to man on it. I’m a big cereal eater, so usually stuck to this end of the breakfast line. It was a good idea to have a light breakfast because you usually do PT directly afterwards and people (PTI’s especially) hate it when you barf up a big breakfast during core-stability training.

Lunch and Dinner are usually pretty similar in regards to what is served, you get the usual range of cooked veggies and the main dishes are usually pasta of some kind, beef or lamb sliced, meat pies and sometimes fish or meatloaf. They usually have some other varying things, depending on the day. Desert is pretty much just lamingtons (in the brown and pink (commonly known as fag-tons) varieties) and chocolate cake. There is also heaps of ice-cream and custard if you want it. Because I’m so slender and plan to have a successful career as a male model (err, yeah), I took the other option, the boring option: Yoghurt and fruit. They put something in the food to kill your sex drive. Speaking as a normal red-blooded 20 year old, I can tell you that whatever they put in, it works. You don’t even think about sex the whole time your there (as opposed to about 7 times a minute before you get there). I reckon this is a good thing, since training would be heaps harder being sexually frustrated, also cracking a fat while on the obstacle course could lead to some serious injury. I think realistically they do it because it also brings down your aggression, so we weren’t biffing each other constantly.

Weapons Training. “SWEET” I thought to myself as the corporal unlocked the armory and handed us out our weapons again. After our first lesson, believe me, I was not thinking “SWEET” anymore. Before you even think about loading ammunition into your weapon, you have to run through 2 weeks of seemingly endless safety drills. Don’t get me wrong, they are absolutely vital and must be done, but they get so boring, just going over the same stuff over and over again. Still, you do feel slightly more badass holding a rifle than you do in the classroom, on the verge of sleep, being taught the intricacies of “why bullets kill you”. The worst part about weapons handling is having to clean the bastards afterwards. Your rifle had to be SPOTLESS. Every shot fired from it equates to about 2 minutes in cleaning time. On some range days you’re churning as many as 90 rounds through the sucker, so it’s not all fun and games.

“SUPER SWEET” I thought as we headed down to the range, “Finally we get to do something cool”. As before, my thoughts betrayed me and I found out that shooting isn’t as cool as I previously thought. Having never fired a gun before in my life, I was behind the 8-ball to begin with, since most of the other lads were from the country and had spent the last 5 years of their youth shooting ‘roos, possums, passing traffic, sheep and whatever else country hicks class as ‘pests’. They spend a few hours teaching you ‘marksmanship principles’ and some ‘projectile physics’ stuff. I remember the range master telling us at the beginning of the lesson on ‘marksmanship principles’:

“Today you will be taught marksmanship principles. The reason you are being taught this is so that you, as Australian soldiers, can put air-conditioning in the enemies head, make orphans of his children and steal his wallet & watch”

The best part was that he said it with such genuine intent, making it all the more funny. We had a bit of a laugh.

“Shut the f*** up, recruits! He’ll be the one laughing when you’ve got a 7.62mm hole in your skull, shitheads. This isn’t a laughing matter.” We weren’t sure what to make of the guy, he was a bit crazy.

Righto, I'll keep going.



Eventually we get down to the mound (the place where you shoot from) and get into position. Everyone is cocky, obviously thinking how much tougher they look with a loaded weapon. We did our shoot and I found out the hard way that shooting is in fact very damn hard. Your position has to be stable and solid as a rock, you have to breathe correctly and there are about 10 other little things you have to concentrate on while you shoot. I messed it all up and only a few of my shots hit home. Much to the wicked delight of the corporals, no doubt, since they took special care to make me feel even more pathetic than I was already feeling.

A few days later we had to do the high-wire confidence course. I have no confidence at all when it comes to heights, so I was practically shitting myself the morning before we did it. The course is broken into 3 parts: 2 obstacle wings and the abseil/freefall tower. The first obstacle on the first wing is probably the hardest, since it’s where you have to overcome your initial fear. It’s just a plain old wooden log, about 20cm wide, suspended 15m above the ground. 15m doesn’t look like a long way when your on the ground looking up at it, but it looks like an eternity when your up there looking down. Most people took a while to get going, but everyone got across it ok in the end (some people were so stubborn about going across one of the corporals had to get their harness on, climb up and physically push them away from the holding beam at the start out onto the log. After doing that one thing, the rest of the course is pretty easy, it’s just overcoming that initial fear in your mind that’s the hardest part. I won’t tell anymore, since I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise for anyone thinking of going down there, but trust me, after that first log, the rest is heaps easy. After we all got through the high-wire, we got to have a go on the flying fox. It was really cool, and the water landing was a nice way to cool off after a solid day out in the sun.

That night we went from red tabs to blue tabs. The whole of ARTC works on the ‘tabs system’. Tabs are just these little colored material strips that go on the shoulder of your uniform. When you first arrive, you are on red tabs which basically mean you’re the new kids and you don’t get respect from anyone. After you finish the high-wire, you move onto blue tabs, which means you are allowed to march to the mess yourself, you can listen to music in the lines after 5 and there are a few other things I forget. The final stage is gold tabs, which you get about 10 days before you march out, and you can pretty much do what you like after 5pm within reason just so long as everything is ready for the following day.

On blue tabs, things got a little better. The corporals were still absolute bastards to you, but they didn’t seem to have the feverish psychopathic edge to them any more. The following 2 weeks (the middle of the course) were probably the least interesting in terms of things we did. More shooting (gradually improving), more marching, more PT and a lot more boring lessons. The only really vivid memory I have from this part of the course was the day the corporals broke me.

It was the by far the worst day of my life thus far. I’ve had some pretty shocking days (as has everyone) but this made them all seem like, for lack of a less-clichéd phrase, a walk in the park.

The day started normally and all was well until after lunch when we went down to the range for our first scored shoot (i.e. to ‘pass’ the shoot you had to achieve a certain score). My shooting was still pretty sloppy at this stage and I was well behind most of the rest of the platoon in terms of marksmanship. I think it was a grouping practice, so you had to get your 6 shots within a circle under 200mm in diameter. I pooched it up pretty bad and my grouping was well over 400mm. My coach went and told my corporals who promptly decided that the best way to improve my shooting would be to verbally drive me into the ground. I had to stand there, at attention, staring directly ahead while these 2 huge corporals yelled and screamed at me 10cm from my ears (one standing on either side) while the rest of the platoon watched on.

“How the f*** are you supposed to be in the army if you can’t even f***ing hit anything at 100m recruit!”

“Why the f*** are you even here, you stupid, incompetent f***! Go back to civvie street and your computers, you pathetic 4-eyed motherfucker!!”

And of course their favourite..
“GET THE f*** OUT OF MY ARMY, SHITHEAD!”

This went on for about 3 minutes, and I swear my ear drums were about to burst from the yelling. The sides of my head, the insides of my ears were covered in spittle and I couldn’t take it anymore. One tear, then another rolled down my blank face.

“Oh you’re a f***ing big man, now recruit aren’t you. Crying like a little bitch, you pathetic fuckwit isn’t something an Australian soldier does!”

I sniffed and blinked back the tears. “YES CORPORAL!”

“I’m going to make it my personal duty to ride your fat, pathetic, crying ass until the end of these 7 weeks, fuckwit. You’d better toughen the f*** up, or you’re going to be out of here within a week…”

And then came the standard dismissal command for a bad recruit. “Now get the f*** out of my face!”

..Beaten, but not broken I made my way back to where everyone else was waiting. The good thing was that the rest of the platoon was really supportive and most of the other fellas admitted that they would have been crying if they were in my position. The rest of the day went quite normally, until after dinner when we were allowed to go up to the base shop to buy necessities (toothpaste, shaving cream, razors, shoe polish ect…) I was on my way up there, marching properly, though still flustered, thinking about what had happened earlier that day. I marched up a small set of stairs marched a few more paces before a corporal from another platoon shouted from further up the path

“Come here recruit!”

I walked over, consciously trying to remember if I was marching correctly and that all my uniform was looking respectable.

“What the f*** was that recruit!?”

“CORPORAL?”

“What week are you in, recruit?”

“WEEK FOUR CORPORAL!”

“Then WHY THE f*** can’t you march properly!”

Still not knowing exactly what I had done wrong in the first place, I just stood there, at attention, not saying anything.

“You didn’t lock your arms in as you came up those stairs, you stupid fuckwit. I have WEEK ONE recruits in my platoon that know how to do it. YOU’RE IN WEEK f***ing FOUR of your training and you still can’t do it!”

“Who’s one of your Corporals, recruit?”

I told him the name of one of our corporals, the one that seemed slightly less hardcore than the others and who sometimes had a bit of a joke with us.

“I’m going call him and tell him that he has a spastic in his platoon that can’t even march up stairs properly after FOUR f***ing WEEKS of training! I’ll let him sort you out”

“YES CORPORAL”

..And then came the standard dismissal for a bad recruit (for the second time that day), “Now get the f*** out of my face”

I marched past him and up to the shop, desperately hoping that it was just an empty threat. I stayed up at the shop for ages, not wanting to go back down and face the music. I was still pretty shaken up from my drilling down at the range and I know that the corporals would jump at the opportunity to smash one recruit twice in a single day. I knew that if they decided to go all out on me again, I would just break down.

Knowing I couldn’t stay up there forever, I marched back down, feeling afraid but not letting it show.

I got back and almost immediately got smashed. I went to my room and one of my room mates told me that one of the corporals, the really nasty one, was looking for me and that I had to go and see him as soon as I got back.

“Don’t worry, digger, just take it on the chin” said one of them, as though that was the magical solution to all life’s problems.

Not being in a particularly positive mood myself, I snapped and said “How about you go down and take it on your f***ing chin then, man!”

I immediately apologized to him and then turned around and headed out the door down the hallway to the corporals office. On the way past another room, I looked in and one of the guys mouthed the words “your so fucked man” to me. Of course, I already knew this.

I got to the end of the hallway and I didn’t even need to get to the corporals office. One of them was standing in the small foyer outside their office, shouting at another recruit about something or other. As soon as he saw me he said to the other recruit “go back to your room, we’ll finish this later”.

By this stage, I was a veritable cocktail of negative emotion. Defeat mixed with despair, a touch of desperation and a squirt of Anger. Angry at the corporals, angry at myself, angry at the world in general. I was expecting a roasting right from the word go, but instead the corporal just casually walked over to me and in a quiet voice said “You see that line on the ground recruit, go and stand behind it and don’t move a f***ing muscle.”

I went and stood behind it and the corporal went back into the office. This was worse than I had expected. The line was called the ‘trial line’ and it was where you stood when they were going to give you an SQ1.

An SQ1 is basically a piece of paper where a corporal writes down something bad that you’ve done formally. It then goes in your file and stays with you for the rest of your military career, so it’s a good idea not to have any of them if you plan to go full time. I wasn’t too concerned about it, since I didn’t plan on getting any promotions anyway, but I knew that whenever somebody got an SQ1, it was accompanied by a severe bollocking (the word we used to describe when a corporal goes psycho and screams his head off at you). I remembered sitting in my room while other people got SQ1’s and thinking to myself ‘Thank god that’s not me down there’. I guess my turn had finally arrived.

So I waited on that line for 5 minutes as the corporal worked away in his office, his tiny mind working overtime to come up with words to put on the SQ1 other than “fuckwit” and “shithead”. Eventually he came out, holding a piece of paper. He handed it to me and said “do you agree with everything that’s written here?”
I didn’t even read it, knowing that no matter what he’d written, I’d have to agree with it anyway.

“YES CORPORAL”

He handed me a pen and told me to sign it. I signed.

He then took it back to his office and then came out again and walked around behind me. I was shaking by this stage, feeling more powerless than ever before. What came next will stay in my mind for ever. He brought his face about 5cm from my ear, I could feel his breath on my cheek and at the top of his lungs he screamed.

“DISCIPLINE!!”

Despite my natural reaction to jerk away, I stood fast, staring directly ahead.

I don’t really remember what he said after that, but it was a really long winded bollocking. I tried to just block it out, concentrating on the wall directly ahead, focusing on the various shapes in the pictures and on the flags. By the end of it, I was a wreck. He gave me the usual “now get the f*** out of my face!” routine and I marched back to my room, tears running down my face. I got back to my room and luckily I was greeted by a large group of sympathetic guys who got me a drink and tried to cheer me up again. I wiped the tears away and put on a smile, more for their sake than mine, but inside I was broken, utterly broken. I wept myself to sleep that night. I felt heaps better the next day and nobody said anything about it again, I suppose hoping that I would get over it and move on.

Over the 7 weeks, the corporals broke every single person in the platoon in a similar fashion.

At the end of that week we got our first taste of real army stuff. They call it “Exercise First Try” and it’s basically a 2 day excursion out bush. I loved it, even though the food was terrible, the weather was shocking, the marching was hard and the shitty army-issue camouflage cream was stinging my eyes, because the corporals can’t yell at you out bush. One of the first lessons they teach us is that you have to make as little noise as possible when out bush, as to avoid enemy detection. This meant that if one of the corporals wanted to tell you off, they had to do it in a whisper. It rained pretty hard overnight and we were all drenched when we got back the following day. Apparently it's just Murphy’s Law of Kapooka, you get awesome weather until you have to go bush. Still, I would rather be wet and cold, sleeping on the ground under a sheet of plastic than be living in the lines with the corporals.

It was strange to see the corporals’ change when you go out bush. They actually show you some respect, I suppose to impose the lesson that out bush, it doesn’t matter what rank you are, your life is in the hands of the man next to you. I even had a joke about the ration packs with one of the corporals and we were both almost in stitches by the end of it. It was nice to see that underneath they are actually human.

As soon as we got back, they reverted back to their ‘good ole’ selves’ and things went back to the way they were before. It was just after we got back that I failed my first ‘bed inspection’.

Every morning you have to make your bed. Perfectly. Hospital corners on all 4 sides and they have to be at exactly 45 degrees. You have to pull the sheets and blanket tight over the bed so there are no wrinkles anywhere on it. To do this you have get under the bed every morning and pull the sheets tight from underneath. Every morning the corporals spring a bed inspection on a random 3 or 4 people. I’d had a few previously and never had a problem. What they do is firstly come up and inspect the hospital corners and they actually get out a protractor and measure the angle. If it’s out more than 10 degrees or so, you fail. They get a coin, drop it on the bed, face down. If the coin bounces, you pass, if it falls and just sits, you fail.

Failing a bed inspection was a real pain in the ass. The corporal doesn’t yell at you, in fact he doesn’t say a word. He just grabs your mattress off your bed (sheets and all), and then throws the whole lot out the window, where it falls 2 stories onto a muddy drainage area. You have to go down, drag your mattress back up, then get your sheets and take them all down to the laundry and wash them. Luckily I only failed one bed inspection. There were guys who would fail 3 or 4 times a week and never learned. I suppose the upside was that they were always sleeping on clean sheets.

The time after you get back from Exercise First Try and before you go out for you final bush trip is taken up almost exclusively by testing. They test you on drill, weapon handling, first aid, marksmanship, navigation and PT. It’s a really stressful time because there is a fairly high standard and you have to work quite hard to pass all the tests (except the written ones-very easy). The two things that stick out from this period of training were bayonet fighting and learning the F89 Minimi machine gun.

I thought Bayonet fighting was going to be quite fun, running around like madmen, screaming and stabbing things with knives. It turned out to be quite painful, but it was also immensely satisfying, because it was an opportunity to unleash the anger and hatred you had been bottling up for the last 4 weeks. Before you even get to stab at anything, the corporals psyche you up something fierce. They made us run for ages, screaming the entire way. They made us scream “KILL KILL KILL!” until we went hoarse then they made us do push-ups in the dirt, screaming KILL KILL KILL as we did them. They made us do all sorts of crazy stuff like this for about an hour and by the end of it, you are seriously psyched up and just want to stab something.
Then they teach you the moves, and let you lose on these rubber-coated targets to stab, slash, butt-stroke and bash to your hearts content. The only bad thing is that when you stab, your wrists get seriously jarred and your left wrist smashes on the magazine of your weapon whenever you thrust. After an hour, your wrists are caining, but you keep going, oblivious to the pain, screaming KILL KILL KILL and imaging the targets are the corporals.

After the corporals are satisfied that you’ve got your desire to murder them well and truly out of your system, they take you over to the bayonet assault course. It’s basically this long course with various obstacles placed in between the mock bayonet targets that you have to KILL KILL KILL and then get to the end of the course in a certain amount of time. It is supposed to start with a huge jump into this chest-deep pool they call the ‘bear pit’, but due to a blue green algae problem, they had to leave it out when we came through. While you’re running through, the corporals are yelling at you to hurry up, firing blanks off like crazy and throwing smoke grenades into your path. Leopard crawling under a cargo net, through a dense cloud of foul smelling smoke, while some prick is yelling at you to “hurry the f*** up” and firing blanks into the air isn’t a great deal of fun, but it certainly gets the adrenalin pumping. I can’t even explain how psyched up you are, you charge the targets with an almost animal ferocity, screaming your new favourite word and slamming them down with all your strength. It’s a side of myself I’ve never seen before (being a fairly non aggressive guy) and it’s a bizarre feeling knowing that it’s there inside of you. That night, you start to feel the pain in your elbows and wrists from having them jarred all day long. You just want to jump in and have a 20 minute hot shower and soak them all away, but the corporals being their usual caring selves, turned off the hot water that night (as they do on random nights over the 7 weeks) so all we got was a 10 second scrub and a taste of hypothermia.

If you want to look tough, don’t bother with leather jackets, motorbikes, tattoos or corduroy pants (don’t deny it, you know they’re tough), all you need is an F89 Minimi LSW (Light Support Weapon). Just looking at the thing makes you feel like Stallone, holding it makes you feel like Van Damme and firing it makes you feel like Schwarzenegger. If they took a picture of me brandishing my Minimi that I could show everyone, I would be fighting off hordes of beautiful women right now, instead of sitting in my room, writing this.

I remember one of the corporals telling us that you crack a fat when you fire the LSW for the first time, it’s that cool. It’s nowhere near as accurate as the steyr (unless in expert hands), but it can get 200 rounds down range in under 30 seconds. The only bad thing about the Minimi is that it weighs a ton (about 8kg’s, but it’s a lot compared to your rifle) and it’s a pain to clean. Pump 200 rounds through that sucker and your looking at an hour to an hour and a half cleaning time. I liked the weapon because I was a reasonably good shot with it right from the start. I’ve got plenty of mass (read: fat) to keep it stable when firing. The skinny lads were getting pushed back a few inches every time they fired a burst. Finally those kg’s were starting to pay off.
One of the last tests you have to do is called LF6 (standing for live fire 6) and it’s basically the test you have to pass in order to be qualified to use the Austeyr as your personal weapon. They throw up these man shaped targets at various ranges that you have to shoot. They score you on where your shot hits the target. There are a 4 concentric circles, obviously scoring more towards the middle, less towards the edges.
I passed no worries and so did most of the others in the platoon, but a few failed and had to go back for retesting a few days later when we got local leave in Canberra.

That night we made our next step up the recruit hierarchy: Gold tabs. Being on gold tabs changed a lot of things. Firstly, it meant that the corporals left at 5pm every day and you had to take care of yourselves until lights-out at 10. This meant that we could get up to some mischief, have a bit of fun and get to know each other a bit better. We played a bit of hallway cricket, had a few wrestling matches and did a lot of group singing. We had lookouts posted outside to tell us when the night-duty corporal was coming, so we could get back to doing sensible stuff. They also gave us longer at the mess to eat our meals, so we didn’t have to shovel the food straight in and then race back. We were allowed to go up to the shop at nights and buy coke and lollies and stuff. After 5 weeks without a taste of anything sugary, a coke and some life savers went down an absolute treat.

The best thing about being on gold tabs though, was the attitude change in the corporals. They call us by our nicknames (an army nickname is usually created by tacking a ‘y’ onto your surname. I became known as Hally) instead of ‘recruit’ and they are generally a lot more friendly. They start telling you more about themselves and what they’ve done in their army career. If you do something wrong, they won’t yell and scream at you, just give you a stern talking to. I thought from the beginning that all the corporals were just total bastards by nature and they just loved yelling, screaming and making people fear them. I came to see during this part of training that they’re not like that at all, that they’re actually decent people underneath.

You are on gold tabs for about 4 days before you leave to go on your major bush exercise: Exercise Dusty Warrior. Given the Murphy’s Law of Kapooka, it pissed down rain and quickly became knows as Exercise Muddy Recruit. Its 4 days out bush where they teach you a lot of ‘real’ army type stuff. Camouflage and concealment, silent movement, section attacks, judging distances accurately and night vision stuff. Unfortunately we didn’t get to play with the night vision gear, because it was pouring down, but we were taught how to use it anyway. Each night we camped at a different location and during the marches from one location to the next (carrying our ~35kg packs) we would have these mock attacks and ambushes sprung on us. We would have to throw off our packs, and get down and see if we could repel the attackers. We were only using blanks, but it was a total adrenalin rush.

Every night you have a gun piquet running, with people doing 90 minute shifts. On piquet you basically just lay on the ground at the edge of your camp, not moving at all and just watching and listening for enemy. Laying on the wet ground, getting soaked from above, having ants and bugs crawling all over you isn’t much fun, but on the second night, that all changed. We’d heard stories from people that sometime during Dusty Warrior; your camp position gets ‘probed’ by and enemy force (usually consisting of a recon unit doing yearly training). On the second night of Dusty Warrior, we got probed big time. There were at least 15-20 men probing us from different directions and as soon as the first shot was fired, everyone was up out of their sleeping bags, down to the perimeter and down on the deck, waiting for them to advance. The process when someone approaches your camp is to yell at them “HALT!” If they halt then you have to make them come forward and be identified. If they don’t halt, usually indicating an enemy, you scream HALT again. If they still don’t halt, you can open up on them. Put air-conditioning in their head

It was so freaky to suddenly hear all these calls of HALT coming up from all around the perimeter and then gunshots going off everywhere. Unfortunately, where I was stationed on the perimeter, was at the edge of a creek so the enemy never approached my position. They quickly retreated back into the darkness and we all waited there anxiously for another hour or so, waiting for the next attack, but it never came. We sent out some clearing patrols and then once they got back, we all went back to bed, still half expecting another attack.

On the third day, we had to do a huge navigation exercise, which was pretty fun despite being in the pouring rain. As they say “It ain’t training if it ain’t raining”. That night was probably my favourite night of the whole 7 weeks. That last night was where we got to relax out bush, they brought us hot dinner from the mess in a 4WD and we sat around and had some fun with the corporals. The Platoon Sergeant made each of us do an impersonation of one of the corporals, which we all enjoyed. The corporals all took it in good humour and we all had a bit of a joke. Over the previous week or so (being on gold tabs) I’d written some poetry in my spare time, so I thought I’d read it out to the rest of the platoon.

These corporals, These men

They hate us, they hate us
These corporals, these men
They don’t even know us
What have we done to them?

They push us, they push us
These corporals, these men
Their aim is to break us
And throw us aside
We can do nothing to stop them
Not fight, run nor hide

They teach us, they teach us
These corporals, These men
To all come together, to all act as one
Even vilifying themselves
So this bonding is done

They lead us, they lead us
These corporals, these men
Out into the unknown
And then back again.

We thank them, we thank them
These corporals, these men
Who hate us and push us
Teach us and lead
Because we are now soldiers
Now a part of their creed

Perhaps down the line
We’ll meet them again
And share a beer and laugh
With these corporals
These men.

I got an applause from everyone present. I was amazed to say the least. I was expecting a barrage of “poetry is for fags” type calls, but everyone just clapped. The guys loved it, they all wanted a copy when we got back and the corporals liked it so much, they got me to type up a copy on the computer when we got back and they framed it and stuck it up on the wall of the lines. I’m part of 12 platoon history forever and it’s something I’m quite proud of.

Anyway, back to the bush. That night was all good and fun, but we knew that the next day wasn’t going to be. The next day we had to do the thing most recruits dread from the moment they arrive at Kapooka: THE CHALLENGE.

The Challenge is described to us as “The most hardcore thing you will ever do” and after completing it, I would have to say that they were right on the money with that call. It takes an entire morning (about 6 hours) and it combines everything you’ve learned in training over the 6 weeks. It is a huge pack march, and at various times throughout the march, you have to perform various activities. A few examples are: The obstacle course (though it’s a lot harder after you’ve been marching for 3 hours)
The Bayonet Assault course
Stretcher carry
Stores carry (ammo boxes and water cans)
A few section attacks (with enemy)

..and other assorted goodies that will make you work until you’re so out of breath you think your going to pass out. One of the girls passed out and because everyone in the platoon didn’t like her, we left her by the side of the road to wait for the safety vehicle to pick her up.

At the end my feet were so sore and I had a mammoth blister on one of heels that had rubbed raw. I’d have to say though, that getting back and jumping into a hot shower and getting into some clean cams was so nice. That afternoon they took us to the pool for a post-challenge recovery swim. We were all expecting to be allowed to just lounge around in the pool, soaking the aches and pains away. The PTI taking the lesson had other plans. We did a fairly hardcore pool PT circuit and by the end, most people were ready to blow chunks. We then went to a short debriefing on the exercise and we gave some feedback on how we went.

Dinner that night was the most satisfying meal I’d eaten in ages. After you complete the challenge, you get a lot more respect from people, because it’s the final thing you have to do before becoming a soldier.

The next day we had our dress inspection. This is where you get dressed up in your Poly’s (polyesters). It’s your dress uniform that you wear to all ceremonial occasions. Everyone passed the inspection and we were all counting down the sleeps until Saturday. On Saturday we marched out.

On Friday we had our final locker inspection. Our rooms had to be so flawlessly perfect and spotless it wasn’t funny. We spent about 6 hours cleaning this tiny little room the night prior, you could almost see your reflection in the vinyl floor. The next morning they still, somehow, managed to find bits that we’d missed. Our room did reasonably well compared to others. There were some people who got in heaps of trouble, but they just didn’t seem to care anymore, because they were marching out the following day and wouldn’t have to see the place ever again. The rest of that day was spent out on the main drill square practicing the march out parade.

That night we packed up all our belongings into bags and boxes that were getting sent straight to our new units. I ceremoniously threw the horrible army-issue pajamas into the bin as well as some of the other crap they issued me. That night I found it really hard to get to sleep. I felt like a kid on the night before Christmas. Saturday couldn’t have come fast enough. Eventually I fell asleep and the following morning, we were awoken when the corporals put Queen-We are the Champions on the stereo and cranked it up. It was so awesome. We all lay there in bed, singing triumphantly “Weee are the champions of the woorrrrrld!” I’d heard the song a thousand times before, but only now did I understand exactly what it meant.

Before the march out parade itself, we had to put our cams on, walk down to the parade ground and clean the hell out of it. Our parents and friends would be there in a few hours watching as we strut our stuff. After an hour of grueling cleaning duties, we went back to the lines, had a quick shower and changed straight into our polys.

Showtime.

We marched down to the Parade ground, rifles in hand; eyes front and chin up, proud as hell of ourselves. We marched onto the ground with the accompaniment of a full 32 piece military band. It’s an amazing feeling, hearing the band playing, hearing the thumping of the bass drum echoing off the stands and listening to the crunch of everyone’s feet marching in perfectly timed unison. It sent a shiver up my spine. We marched on, halted, turned to face the crowd. The applause that went up was unbelievable. There were only about 200 people there, but it sounded like ANZ stadium after a QLD state of origin victory. Parents so proud they were crying, girlfriends and boyfriends whistling and cheering as loud as they could, kids jumping up and down for their dads. It was an amazing feeling. I think the way the corporals describe it afterwards is the best: You felt 10-foot tall and bulletproof.

The Commandant of ARTC arrives and gives a speech to the crowd, making a point to mention that “now these young men know how to clean, sew and wash” which was met by a token “hehehe” from all the mothers. He then went on, telling them some more about what we did in training, all of us silently wondering if he would tell them about the corporals breaking us one by one, or throwing our beds out the window, or making us scream KILL KILL KILL until we couldn’t talk anymore. I would have liked to see the reaction from the crowd if he did.

Then he turned and gave us a short speech that I can’t really remember, except for the last words he spoke “Be proud. Your Australian soldiers now.”

Then he left, and some other (less important) people came and gave speeches while we stood there, rigid to attention, staring directly ahead. Then they played the national anthem and we marched off, hundreds of camera flashbulbs exploding as we passed by the crowd who clapped and cheered us on.

What happened next was, for me, a much greater, prouder moment than the ceremony itself. We marched off the parade ground, out of the view of the parents and friends. One by one, the corporals walked past us, shook each of our hands in turn and said “Welcome to the club, mate, you’ve done well.”

“Congratulations, Private Hall” one of them said.

To me, that made the 7 weeks all seem worth it. Even the corporal who had given me my SQ1 came and said he was proud of me for finishing the course. As I shook his hand, I almost felt like crying again, but not out of sadness.

We got back to the lines, grabbed our wallets and went up to the Edmondson’s club for the march-out function, where out parents and friends waited for us. It was just this mass of people, as I arrived, husbands & wives, parents & sons, girlfriends & boyfriends all locked in joyful embrace. You could almost taste the pride and love in the air. I walked past them all, silently wishing that my parents had come down for this.

Since my parents didn’t come down (a bit too far, all the way from Brisbane) I just hung around with the other people in the same boat as me or the ‘orphans’ as the corporals called us. I went around and met all the families of the other guys in the platoon. After 7 weeks, you know so much about everyone and it’s really great to actually meet the loved ones that they tell you about at night when they’re feeling homesick. I bought all the corporals and the sergeant a beer with some of the other guys and we stood around chatting about the course and having a joke. The corporals call you ‘mate’ and they actually treat you like one as well. The Army catering corps put on a huge buffet lunch and everyone got a good feed. Then it was time to leave.

All the people who had family come down were allowed to leave and head home right away, so we spent about an hour helping carry gear down to their cars and saying our goodbyes. You make some really close friends over the 7 weeks and it’s a sad moment saying goodbye to them, knowing that you’ll probably never meet again.

Then after those people had left all that remained were the Full-timers who were going straight to their IET (Initial Employment Training) school the next day, and those of us whom the army were transporting home. We all got changed into our civilian clothes. I got changed into my pair of old comfortable jeans and loose fitting shirt. I was surprised that when I put them on I thought how uncomfortable they felt compared to my cams. Regardless of how they felt, I threw them on with glee, finally free of the shackles of conformity dressing.
When we were all dressed, they made us sign the leave register and then bussed us into Wagga Wagga and let us lose.

What happened after is a bit hazy in my mind. I understand there was a copious amount of alcohol consumed, much pool played, many songs sang and fun had by all.

We had to be back on base by 9pm, and we were all totally pissed by that stage. We all came in and pretty much passed out on our beds.

The next day we got up, had a leisurely breakfast in our civilian gear, moseyed down to the bus, threw our luggage on and headed off. As we drove back out the front gates, we all let up and almighty cheer and high-fives were flying all over the place.

We had made it.

They bussed us to the Wagga Airport, where we caught a plane to Sydney and from there to Brisbane. There were a lot more sorrowful goodbyes along the way, but finally the time I had been waiting 7 weeks for came as I walked off the plane into the Brisbane domestic terminal and into the arms of my family.

So I guess the question everyone wants to know is: was it worth it? And to that I would have to say yes, it was. It was a real experience and I think I’ve become a much more mature person because of it. It’s hard, but the feeling you get at the end makes it all feel worth it. You make friends you will have forever, even if you never see them again. You find your inner strength and learn more about yourself than you thought possible.

Thanks for reading.

bloody great post, are the corprals that full on ?

I thoroughly enjoyed that. Very well written

Yeah it wasn't THAT bad for us, but then I had an easy ride and didn't stuff anything up. If you and your mates look out for each other you can usually find and correct problems before the Corporals do... hot tip.

Goes a bit overboard with the seccos, at least by today's standards. Obviously they are still I have the vocabulary of a bogan who dropped out in year 9 and the word I was looking for was "going to" yell and swear a lot, but they don't deliberately belittle and insult you for no purpose other than belittling and insulting you.

Yeah a bit of slight over exaggeration

Would it be the same if ya went full time?

what happens if ya laugh when your getting yelled at?