My name’s Leading Aircraftman Stuart Willis, I’m a clerk in the Air Force. I recently deployed to East Timor and I worked in the orderly room. It was my job to do the administrative functions, look after people and basically filing a lot.
Basically filing keeps a permanent record of everything that happens on the operation, it has to be kept, I think indefinitely now by the government. Anything that happens, from leave, travel, to incidents that might have occurred, injuries, everything that happens while we’re there is kept on file and kept for future records.
There were things like mechanical breakdowns of some of the helicopters, injuries or illnesses to some of the staff, incidents in dealing with the local population, that sort of information, also just basically leave and travel and getting people in and out of the country.
I was involved in bringing in toys for a local orphanage, so basically it was organised in Australia and we went to the orphanage and unpacked all the boxes and got them out to the people. I also took some U.S. Medical people out to villages and they assisted some of the community there, also I was involved in a local touch football and beach volleyball competition, which was much involved with the locals.
I think it was just going into the markets and just talking to the people there, just so see how they’re going and being able to put some money in by buying some of their souvenirs like, they have a tais blanket over there which is their big industry over there, and buying coffee from them I think that just being able to put something back in through money, I guess, helping them out that way was probably the best way I could.
Definitely, it was so much different to what I’ve ever done back in Australia. So, it was good because I worked with New Zealanders and sometimes the Americans and Army and Navy so it was just really good, and Federal Police as well so… just meeting all these new people and being overseas in a strange environment was just great.