Yea, my name’s Jida Murray-Gulpilil, my father’s community is Ramingining, that’s our community in North East Arnhem Land. My mother’s family are Victorian Aboriginal. I’ve come up here to join NORFORCE. You know, honor my family’s history, continue the role that we have with our country here, in Australia. Protecting our environment, our coastal waters, rivers, our land and country. It’s a really, you know, honorable job, I’m very privileged to have. And, I’ve just come, freshly off of my courses. I’ve been here for 10 weeks now. They haven’t been able to get rid of me yet. I’ve been working everyday after my courses.
The activity that we were involved in this morning, was basically routine stuff that we do the, with the zodiacs and have the zodiacs fully equipped with all our gear, surveillance equipment, safety equipment. Then we send down to the creek, down there, in formation, doing formations, off of the LCM 8 which is a type of barge – landing vessel, that carries all of our equipment as well as vehicles and all that type of stuff. The formations we do are formations that we use out in the water, whether it be the in the river or out on the sea waters and it’s tactical stuff, it’s safety, and it’s blending in with background of the environment. You know we have our DPCU’s, all our gear is all camouflaged, it’s a proper Australian sort of camouflage, have DPCU, it’s all a part of, you know, the job, the role and being a patrolman.
I think it’s very important. I take the role very seriously. The skills, the training that we’ve obtained are from the very best officers, and these skills go into being a patrolman or a medic, or a signalman, or a second in charge, or a patrol commander. We go out on 6 man patrols, there are different activities that happen out in the isolated areas of say Arnhem Land or the Kimberly or maybe the Cape York, you know. In our AO, around these islands we focus on FFV’s, which are foreign fishing vessels, and also, this is what we are mainly focused on at the moment but our role also goes into the ghost flights that come in and land here on the mainland, trafficking illegal drugs and arms. There’s also, you know, the threat of, through the FFV’s, the foreign fishing vessels, there’s also the threat of disease, or you know, foreign sort of stuff coming into our environment and harming our environment. You know, we aboriginal people, we live off the land and if any of our animals are threatened, have a virus or anything like that, you know, that means that we can get that as well. You know, environment is important to us, our water is too. And, as aboriginal people, you know, we work together with the Australian Army and this is what we have today, you know, we are aboriginal people – we are patrolmen, some of us are corporals, some of us are sergeants, cadet captains, stuff like that you know, it’s starting to – you know our people are starting to move up in the ranks and that’s really important you know.
It raises self esteem, you know, it also makes you fit, makes you very smart. Every day you get a lot of stuff out of the Army, you know. My grandfather served in the Second World War, went to Papua New Guinea and Borneo and stuff, and he was a really great man in the community and people respected him and admired his work because he was very passionate. When you work in the army you dedicate yourself to a role, you know, and you become more stronger at it. And that’s what we need, we need more of our people coming out of our communities and start to balance out that cultural skills, you know, bush skills with the Army skills, blend that in and you become a very good warrior and fighter for your people in the community as a spokes person, ambassador, maybe teacher, or soldier, patrolman, medic. It’s a really, really good thing. I’ve only just started but I can see there’s a good future for myself anyway, and I reckon there’s a good future there for a lot of other people as well.