Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 09:42:21 +1100
Subject: some administrative points for next week
From: "Nick Jans"
To: all
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friends

I have had a couple of inquiries regarding dress for the various functions so just in case you're wondering too, here are my suggestions.

Drinks Sunday night: I am intending to wear a blazer and tie to the RMC mess but I think these days such sartorial standards are fairly flexible and you could neglect the tie and even the jacket. My guidance: dress the way you think the ladies at the function would like you to dress to complement their standards.

The parade: something a bit more formal, but a blazer and tie would be okay if you did not want to wear a suit. I will be wearing a light weight summer suit.

Dinner Tuesday night: black-tie, no miniatures.

Regarding the parade: we have seat allocations/tickets and parking space authorisations to allow us to park within the college grounds (thankfully, the college societies are very conscious that we are old duffers and cannot be relied upon to walk up from the ovals the way we did last time). These will be distributed on Sunday evening and on Monday. I can make arrangements for those small number of people who will not be attending events on either of those preceding days.

It is hard to believe that this event is a mere seven days away!

Cheers

Nick

Date: Monday, December 06, 2004 9:21 PM
From: Graeme Dunstan
To: Nick Jans
Cc: To all
Subject: A cultural exchange
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Thanks for your guidance in protocol, Nick.

And thanks to Rollo Brett who has emailed me to invite me to lead in the after dessert toast to the Queen.

Gracious words are easy to find, but loyalty to the Mrs. Windsor and the class and privilege she represents, that's another matter. But i love a challenge. Happy to accept. Happy to entertain.

But there is a condition. A cultural exchange, as it were.

I get to fly a Eureka flag at the Passing Out Parade. And you all get to stand beside me truly.

Eureka150 was big success. If the rebel flag can now fly in the Parliament, why not at the RMC parade ground?

May you all be well and happy.

And in the Eureka spirit.

Graeme

Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 17:12:27
From: Graeme Dunstan
To: Chris Appleton
CC: to all
Subject: Eureka150 at RMC
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webgreetings Brigadier,

I will be at the Class '64 Reunion from next weekend and I look forward to meeting you.

May the passing out parade go well.

I understand that you to be caught up in a media storm. Just come through one myself organising Terry Hicks to be Leading Light for the Eureka150 Dawn Walk. Be assured it will pass quickly. Front page today, fish and chip wrapping tomorrow.

Meanwhile be kind on those cadets and their hijinx. In the media reports you berate them like children for having failed some test of decency. In doing so you show narrowness of mind and lack of compassion.

What is it about legal drugs that the use of which makes soldiers and soldiering safer?

The legal/illegal divide is discriminative law prescribed my multinational drug companies and their corporate courtier governments.

They have decreed as dangerous and illegal natural (and cheap) plant medicines (opium poppy, cannabis and coca leaf) though known to be efficacious medicines from over 10,000 years of practice.

But the synthetic drugs made by pharmaceutical companies are considered safe beyond question as mass medicines: Seropax for the depressed, Valium for the bored pensioners, and Ritalin for kids who act up in school.

To say nothing of the dangers of Gulf War jabs! Who profited from that exercise in compulsory drug taking? And how did being legal make those jabs safer for soldiers?

You are in the heat of the storm now. Maybe you know already that it is a beat up created by US Drug War policy and policing, a media campaign to get new and more harsh powers of search for police. More civil liberties slipping away. And you, complicit by default. But both you and the cadets, pawns in a bigger game of deception and dishonesty. Would it help if i was to follow up this with letters to editors?

When I come to the Duntroon passing out parade, I would like to fly the Eureka flag.

I reckon if it is appropriate that in this 150 anniversary year to fly the Eureka flag in the Australian Parliament, it is good enough to fly at the Royal Military College.

What do you think?

May you be well and happy.

Graeme Dunstan
www.peacebus.com

Date: 07 December, 2004 1:46 PM
From: Ray Fardell
To: graemedunstan@peacebus.com ; Nick Jans
Cc: to all
Subject: Re: A cultural exchange
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Dear Graeme,

Although we won't be present at the parade, Gabrielle and I would object to the class being the instrument of a sideshow there. Please reconsider.

Regards to you and all,

Ray Fardell

Date: 12/7/2004 18:22:25 +1100
From: "Rod Usback"
To: "Graeme Dunstan"
CC: to all
Subject: Re: A cultural exchange
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Graeme

I trust you are only kidding. If you want to protest in front of Parliament House while you are here, then good on ya. But whatever you do, don't spoil the reunion - you are an invited guest. We are coming together in friendship, which is what you are on about, and I guess that is why you start out with my trust.

Hope this finds you well.

Regards

Rod

Date: 12/7/2004 18:24:17 +1000
From: "John Kingston"
To: "Ray Fardell" , , "Nick Jans"
CC: to all
Subject: Re: A cultural exchange
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Graeme,

Whilst I appreciate that many people have a barrow to push (indeed some people have many barrows to push) and I respect their right to push them, I strongly object to anyone who chooses to push a particular barrow at an event such as our forthcoming Reunion.

It is my view that our Reunion must not be used by anybody to push a political, or indeed any other, barrow no matter how apparently noble the cause. To do so will cause angst and unnecessary ill will among a group of ageing former RMC Cadets who have chosen to get together primarily to renew old acquaintances and enjoy each others company.

It may come as somewhat a surprise to you that I don't necessarily share all of your views of the world, its problems, or how best to remedy them. I am happy to debate them until the cows come home over a cold beer, but I will object strongly if you attempt to turn our Reunion into some sort of Three-Ring Circus at which to pursue your own agenda.

My advice, for what it is worth, is that you come along and enjoy the occasion in the spirit in which it was conceived. If you find that difficult to do, then I suggest that you don't bloody well come.

Regards

John Kingston

Date: 12/07/2004 10:15:40 +0000
From: "John Redward"
To: graemedunstan@peacebus.com
CC: to all
Subject: RE: Eureka150 at RMC
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Graeme

I have been looking forward for quite sometime to catching up with and having an agreeable social time with with my friends and classmates. These people played a large part in my growing up and the forming of my character and lifestyle. None of that formation was politically motivated.

I sincerely hope that you are able to respect my wishes and not involve me or any other member of our class who is of a similar mind to myself in any form of political protest or rallying point. Your 'condition' that you be able to to publically fly a political 'flag' (actual or colloquial) during the parade it is not acceptable to me. If I miss out on your lead in to a toast - so be it - but I would love to hear your rapport (especially if it explains to me what Eureka is all about) in the 'privacy' of our dinner if you reconsider.

Looking forward to a great few days

John Redward

Date: 12/7/2004 21:08:01 +0800
From: "John Durant"
To: Graeme Dunstan,"Chris Appleton"
CC: to all
Subject: Re: Eureka150 at RMC
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Graeme,

I will be coming from the Kimberley to this reunion. I am trying to do a real job for real people who suffer incredible disadvantage. People who have never had the advantages that were available to you. 56% of the participating workforce is unemployed and badly in need of Capacity Building.

I have just come from a medical planning forum where the gruesome issues of dialeses, infectious disease, sexual infections, abuse of alcohol and substances and many other matters were discussed and resolutions sought.

I do not need to experience the mockery you propose.

My world is far too real and I fear you would stress my tolerance unreasonably.

Let me propose peace, tolerance, understanding and mutual acceptance.

Regards and best wishes,

JohnDurant

Date: 12/07/2004 20:31:28 +0000
From: "bruce manning"
To: graemedunstan@peacebus.com
Subject: Cultual Exchange
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Graeme,

Your proposal has brought me no peace. My passion is perhaps greater than that of my classmates.

If your objective was to influence the horrible conservatives at the reunion I wish to assure you that in one case you have failed and achieved the opposite. I have never been a memeber of a political party but now I realsie that for my children and grandchildren to live in peace and not be threatened by your non peaceful objective I must do what I have never done and joina political party and nfluence it to resist the things you hold dear.

You have brought great disharmony into my home. Irene was looking forward to a happy and enjoyable time mixing with some different folk who nowdomany and varied things but who are also decent, genrous and peaceful of spirit. Then someone throws a selfish mean and non peaceful bomb. Irene and I are now a tad at odds because of this bomb. I am more passionate than my classmates because of how disruptive this could be to Irene's family.

As it stands I will not go to the reunion because I cannot abide the bad manners you propose. You propose that we be invited into someone's home (RMC) for their party and then tell them how they will clebrate and then being so lacking in peace as to hold a political gun to their head. Is this the way of Buddha?

May God bless you.

Bye Bruce

Date: 12/07/2004 23:19:34 +0000
From: "Geoff Stewart"
To: graemedunstan@peacebus.com
Subject: RE: A cultural exchange
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Graeme,

I can only echo the displeasure of my class mates if your proposal is genuine and not just a stir. This is meant to be a good memory for all, not to be selfishly hijacked. I would object very strenuously, and support Col, to your proposal.

Geoff

Date: 12/7/2004 20:28:00 -0500
From: "Martin Laide"
To: all
Subject: RE: fourth class camp training

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Memories of Kangaroo Valley

Leeches, melting feet and of course the rain! Was it really 16" in three days? Most of all I remember the day Rod Earle and I built and shared the hootchie which we camouflaged with huge leaves that also kept out the rain. Dry as a bone. Turned in and slept. I'm not sure which one of us woke first to find we were being attacked by bull ants. We had sited the hootch well - right on top of a bull ant nest. Outside it felt like we had abandoned ship it was so wet. I don't remember now who took us in for the night. I can laugh at it now but was not so funny at the time.

Regards to all and have a great time at the reunion.

Martin

Date: Thursday, December 02, 2004 6:06 PM
From: Nick Jans [mailto:sigma@virtual.net.au]
To: all
Subject: fourth class camp training
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friends

I was driving through the Kangaroo Valley just a few days ago and -- would you believe? -- it was raining. It reminded me just how miserable I was during fourth class camp training; and the effect that the experience had on Corps choice some three years later. I recall that the infantry instructor, whoever he was in 1964, virtually had to press gang a 'quorum' from our ranks.

Cheers

Nick

Nick Jans

Date: 12/8/2004 08:11:15 +1000
From: "Ross Bishop"
Reply-to:
To: Graeme Dunstan,"'Chris Appleton'"
CC: all
Subject: RE: Eureka150 at RMC
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Graeme

I find your intended use of the Reunion to further your own political agenda quite unacceptable. Having just read the responses from

Rod Usback, John Durant, John Redward and Kingo I fully endorse their comments and hope that we can enjoy the event in the spirit

It was intended.

Ross Bishop

Date: 12/8/2004 09:54:18 +1100
From: "Des Mueller"
To: Graeme Dunstan , "Nick Jans"
CC: all
Subject: Re: A cultural exchange
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Graeme,

I have discussed your email with Brigadier Chris Appleton, Commandant RMC. His view, as is mine, is that Graduation is not an occasion on which to make a political or social statement. Nothing, even if it is symbolic and merely intended to draw attention to an individual or a cause, should be allowed to mar the occasion for the graduates, their families and friends. Neither should anything similar be allowed to disrupt the Class Reunion.

The reunion is about men and their partners, most of whom are in the transition between middle and late adulthood, enjoying a rare opportunity to share each others' company, possibly for the last time in some cases.

The Class of 64 produced many fine people and not a few brave men. Many have been successful in walks of life well removed from the Defence Force.

We have all had a rich and diverse experience of life which has shaped our individual perceptions of reality. This is not the occasion to attempt to impose those realities on other people.

People have been conciliatory in response to your email but I would suggest that there is a limit to both their individual and collective tolerance.

Warmest regards,

Date: 12/8/2004 09:03:00 +1000
From: "Colin Toll"
To: Graeme Dunstan, "Chris Appleton"
chris.appleton@defence.gov.au>
CC: all
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Really Graeme, you should go and take a cold shower.

Your contribution to our Class Reunion is already negative. I am genuine in saying that I would love to see you at the reunion. However, Graeme, you are using your colleagues from long ago for your own agenda and that is offensive. For our sake and indeed your own, why not focus next weekend on true meaning and purpose of the reunion.

Read carefully and thoughtfully what your former class mates are saying to you. I recollect that you were, and hopefully still are a decent chappy, so why don't you try and show that characteristic over the next weekend.

If you don't and I am present I might just deck you!

Colin Toll

PS. For Brig Chris Appelton. Every class has one. Graeme is ours.

Date: 12/8/2004 10:23:21 +1100
From: "Peter Reid"
To: Graeme Dunstan
Subject: Re: Eureka150 at RMC
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Graeme,

Whilst I respect your right to demonstrate and protest, please respect ours in not supporting you at this time and at this place.

EUREKA 150 may have been a big success in Ballarat last week....lets all leave it there for the time being.

This is a Class of 64 REUNION, an affair a number of our classmates have, to their great credit, spent considerable time and effort on organizing, lets keep it a purely social affair. There is currently sufficient political and media interest in RMC without us adding to it.

Please remember later graduating classes will want to follow, let not the Class of 64 stuff it up for them.

Looking foward to next week

Regards

Date: 12/8/2004 11:39:02 +1100
From: "The Grand Bar and Brasserie"
To: Graeme Dunstan
Subject: Re: A cultural exchange
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Graeme,
I endorse all the remarks others have offered in response to your "cultural exchange" offer. Don't count me in. John Griggs

Date: 12/8/2004 16:46:06 +1100
From: "brian turnbull"
To: all
Subject: Re: fourth class camp training
------------------------------------------------------------------------
fourth class camp trainingHow the memories come flooding back!!

My most vivid recollection is being deployed in a position so wet that we used blankets and toggle ropes to suspend ourselves from trees and slept in the vertical, getting a bad case of trench feet as a result. About 6 of us were taken to Ulladullah and spent some days in a motel there, a respite from Kangaroo Valley, but what a way to do it!! Luckily we recovered enough to be able to participate in the march back through the College gates and onto the Parade Ground, to the tune of "Mickey Mouse" from memory..

I also recall one of us, (Bob Millar I think), sleeping too close to a fire and being woken with the water in his boots on the boil!!!.

I turned up some notes I made after the '94 re-union, and recall that the thing that most impressed me was the inclusion of the non-graduates. I considered that a privelege, rising from recognition of the bonding that we had as young men in the face of a common adversary (Second Class???), and the shared experiences of those times.

I will not be with you this time, (due to a course of chemo I am on), but with all optimism, I should be at the next re-union,
"And the men that were boys when I was a boy,
Shall sit and drink with me"
Belloc.

Enjoy.

Regards,

Brian

Date: 12/9/2004 07:42:02 +1100 From: "Nick Jans" To: All Subject: RE: fourth class camp training ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We will be thinking of you, Brian.

My memories of the 94 reunion are similar to yours, except that I think the feeling of inclusion was more generally extended. The 94 reunion was a celebration of 'us', whereas the 84 reunion was a celebration of ' me'.

At the 84 reunion there was a lot of strutting and boasting and ego preening. In 94 there was much greater willingness to share stories of the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortune of others, and to give support and to accept and sympathise with the rocky sections of other people's paths in life.

It was intriguing to see what a little maturity could do.

Cheers

Nick

Date: 12/9/2004 07:21:00 +1000
From: "Bob Millar"
To: all
Subject: Re: fourth class camp training.
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fourth class camp trainingYes it was me. How could I ever forget the boiling socks!
My recollection is of a miserable, sodden bunch who reverting to singing hymns around the fire to make the time pass. Zap would have been proud of us.
I think the place at Ulladullah was actually a guest house (now termed B & B) run by a delightful lady who fed us exceedingly well. It had a marvelous view north over the bay and we spent a few days sitting in the sun soaking up that view before returning to the camp.
See you all next week.
Bob

Date: Friday, December 10, 2004 12:40 PM
From: "Graeme Dunstan"
To: all
Subject: too far
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hey Rod, hey comrades all,

Apologies for the delay in replying. On the road with laptop troubles.

My provocation has gone too far.

Hear me plainly: no Eureka flag, no embarrassment, a respectful guest. Promise, promise, promise.

May you all be well and happy.

Graeme

Date: 12/10/2004 13:47:52 +1100
From: "Rod Usback"
To: Graeme Dunstan
CC:all
Subject: Re: too far
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks Graeme

Look forward to catching up with you, and everyone else.

Regards

Rod