27 February - Week 5

G'day Everyone,

Realised I haven't really covered the routine that goes on here. Every morning we wake up at 6:00am, yell, grab our bottom sheets and go stand in the hallway. This is followed by 15 minutes to shave, get dressed and make our beds; and 15 minutes to do our morning duties which is cleaning the laundry for me. Then usually 20-30 minutes to have breakfast and be back with our teeth brushed.

Lunch is at either 11:30 or 12:00, but before this we have 4 periods of stuff to do. This is either lecture on something, physical training, marching or shooting. Today we had a 5km pack march in the morning, then stretcher carry, and now I'm sitting around at hte range waiting for my turn to go fire my shooting test.

After lunch there are another 4 periods of stuff. Dinner is next at 5:30pm or 6:00pm. This is also sometimes followed by some periods of learning stuff - a lot of the time though we have admin & revision, which means we do our ironing, polishing of brass and general cleaning whilst having a chat to the guys in our rooms. By 9:30pm everyone is usually pretty stuffed and it's time for bed. Really, everyone's stuffed by 7:00pm and we have to wait around until 10:00pm to go to bed. So at 9:30pm we go have showers and get changed into our PJ's. Once we're all finished this, we get our mail, read that or do some reflection, then it's finally time for bed. Then BAM!, after another terrble night's sleep, it all starts over again.

There are some days that are a bit different, like Sundays when we get up at 7am and have some time up at the chapel from 9:00am till 10:45am. We'll usually come back and do some work in the afternoon. Saturdays we've started getting local leave now, which means we go into Wagga Wagga and buy stuff and hang around, doing what we want while dressed in our own clothes; jeans, belt, good shoes and a polo shirt - tucked in, of course. I'm starting to get into the swing of things here. Also, it's almost halfway. Yay!

Posted on behalf of MJ Waters.