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Hello everyone, thanks for the breakfast Persie sounds yummm!

Hope evryone is good,,must be almost your daytime there :-)

Hope all goes well Dea... thinking of you...

Persie <3

Life in the Australian Army...

Text of a letter from a kid from Eromanga to Mum and Dad. (For Those of you not in the know, Eromanga is a small town, west of Quilpie in the far south west of Queensland )


Dear Mum & Dad,

I am well. Hope youse are too. Tell me big brothers Doug and Phil that the Army is better than workin' on the station - tell them to get in bloody quick smart before the jobs are all gone! I wuz a bit slow in settling down at first, because ya don't hafta get outta bed until 6am. But I like sleeping in now, cuz all ya gotta do before brekky is make ya bed and shine ya boots and clean ya uniform. No bloody horses to get in, no calves to feed, no troughs to clean - nothin'!! Ya haz gotta shower though, but its not so bad, coz there's lotsa hot water and even a light to see what ya doing!

At brekky ya get cereal, fruit and eggs but there's no kangaroo steaks or goanna stew like wot Mum makes. You don't get fed again until noon and by that time all the city boys are buggered because we've been on a 'route march' - geez its only just like walking to the windmill in the bullock paddock!!

This one will kill me brothers Doug and Phil with laughter. I keep getting medals for shootin' - dunno why. The bullseye is as big as a bloody dingo's a**e and it don't move and it's not firing back at ya like the Johnsons did when our big scrubber bull got into their prize cows before the Ekka last year! All ya gotta do is make yourself comfortable and hit the target - it's a piece of p**s!! You don't even load your own cartridges, they comes in little boxes, and ya don't have to steady yourself against the rollbar of the roo shooting truck when you reload!

Sometimes ya gotta wrestle with the city boys and I gotta be real careful coz they break easy - it's not like fighting with Doug and Phil and Jack and Boori and Steve and Muzza all at once like we do at home after the muster.

Turns out I'm not a bad boxer either and it looks like I'm the best the platoon's got, and I've only been beaten by this one bloke from the Engineers - he's 6 foot 5 and 15 stone and three pick handles across the shoulders and as ya know I'm only 5 foot 7 and eight stone wringin' wet, but I fought him till the other blokes carried me off to the boozer.

I can't complain about the Army - tell the boys to get in quick before word gets around how bloody good it is.

Your loving daughter,

Sheila

Love it Mr Jones.... :-D

Good one Jonesey :-D


I have had a reply from Howard.......it's as convoluted as his message. I still think he hasn't fully grasped how these boards function.



Hiya Joy......High Noon? Guess you were having a Gary Cooper moment....lol ;-)



Wonder how Dea is getting on?


Beautiful afternoon here.

Pers that 'snap' you provided this morning was ace, it lasted until lunch too

Dea, I hope things went as well as could be expected <3

I dont get high noon Joy?

High noon!

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards.page/board/announcements/thread/1278142

Love it Jonesey!

Yes - I am back !

Thank you all for thinking about me today - It all went as well as it could do and the Priest even turned up !! - He waffled on for what seemed like ages, not really about my brother, but his friends seemed to appreciate what he said, even though I didn't!

I am not religious, but it was obviously important to him and to them !

The important thing is that he has now gone to his rest in a most beautiful place so we have done what we needed to do!

It was very touching that his neighbours (in a very poor area) had taken a collection and we stopped to collect some flowers from them to put in with him. - The rest of their collection they are giving to a local hospice in his name.

It was heartwarming to see so much local respect being paid to him.

Both my husband and I are even more adamant that we do not want any of that when we go so will be looking at any alternatives that we can arrange beforehand !

Anyway, let's move this thread onto 'brighter things' !!! - No more talk of this on here now ! (I will pm Fans in a day or 2, if she doesn't mind re any alternative ideas on the DIY 'jobbies' etc).

After such a long day, we stopped off for a bite to eat just before we got home as we hadn't eaten since yesterday lunch - It was very nice and I had 1 glass of wine with it which for some strange reason has made me feel decidedly 'tiddly' !!!

Just unwinding a little before an early night is due I think.

Dea Xxx

Good good Dea...the wine I mean!

Glad all went well Dea and you is welcome to PM me anytime that is not Thursday to Sat night as I shall be in Somerset taking Mr Hurricane home,seeing other Granchers and wishing my Pater a Hoppy Bufdy(Thursday).

I think someone used a water canon in my bathroom while taking their bath.....Lucky we have an old type red tiled floor or the wet rot would prob start in... :-D

Glad the priest turned up Dea.......it may have been meaningless to you love, but it would have been meant with good intentions and was probably about death and the faith. It was good his friends appreciated the words. Nice thought about the money going to the hospice. You can always google for alternative funerals - quite a lot of choice really. You must be shattered so you're entitled to an early night.


As for me..........I'm a traditional girl ........ the full works with dignity, lots of laughter, love, and rousing hymns.



Anyone know what the changes on here were today? They were supposed to have happened at noon.....I haven't spotted anything different as yet ...???

Dea


I sorry, as was without internet yesterday , could not add my thoughts for a peaceful day for you and OH

It seems to have gone as well as can be expected

Love Renes <3 <3 <3

That's sad lainie!

This Priest hadn't even bothered to ring me beforehand, didn't reply to the messages I had left on his answerphone and had never met my brother.

I had to ring the Funeral people this morning just before I left to travel up there and tell him to 'put a rocket' up the Priest and to at least make sure ho phoned my brother's very close friend and neighbour up there before he arrived to do the Eulogy !

The consequence was a Eulogy with some incorrect info and very little 'personal stuff' which I could equally have taken offence at but at the end of the day, if his close friends (who were like family to him) were O.K. with it, then 'I' didn't matter.

Thanks for the thoughts.

Dea Xxx

Thanks Renes - I knew you were with me even if you had not said it on here!

Dea Xxx

Anyone else so tired they could sleep on a drunken donkey?

It's understandable you're tired Gins.....you're another year older!


Sleep well.



Just watching a Lewis dvd - got interrupted by a visitor for a while but back on it now.


Then bed.

Visitors, this time of night Cyn....coppers or the rent man!

I best go on up....pooped

night all ~~~~~


PS: Pers.....more breakfast tomorrow?

Morning all, lovely and sunny here again...far too nice to be stuck in an office today! :-)

Glad your day went well Dea, you'd be pretty tired after all that happening and then the day itself

Thank you for the story Jonesey, I read it out to my OH in my best Aussie "axesent."

He enjoyed it so much I had to copy it and e-mail him so he could pass it on.. and have taken the liberty of passing it around myself.

Well Dea, you will be glad that's over and as the saying goes "it will be alright on the night" and it did go okay, his friends were happy. Regarding alternatives...

With both my parents funerals we knew what the eulogies contained, we knew what music was to be played and there were to be no prayers or hymns. It all went according to plan and I think my mother would have approved (she may have wanted a prayer or a hymn but Dad was still living) and I am certain my father would have loved to have been there right down to the minutes silence when my granddaughter (aged 6 months sitting in her pushchair) chose that moment to blow a large raspberry. <3