Patrick Blaik

Patrick Blaik has spent more than 30 years in the Australian Army.

His father was one of the “unknown Nashos”, the national servicemen who served in the early 1950s, and his grandfather, Albert Blake, served in the Second World War.

“My grandfather enlisted in 1939,” he said. “He went to Egypt and Palestine, and was eventually discharged in Australia in 1944, so he came home from the Second World War, but he never really came home. My grandma actually changed the spelling of her name to Blaik after the war, and when my father passed away in December 1976 my grandfather was actually still alive, unbeknownst to us.

“My grandmother was born in Melbourne just across the road from Albert Park Lake and was raised as the daughter of an Englishman. Her mother, my great-grandmother, had a relationship with an Aboriginal man in WA, so she was basically shipped to boarding school in Victoria where she gave birth to my grandmother, who was immediately adopted out.”

Patrick was a teenager working at a supermarket in Melbourne when the grocery manager at the time introduced him to the Army Reserve in the early 1980s.

“I thought, ‘This isn’t a bad gig’, so ended up in the Regular Army at the end of ’81,” Patrick said, smiling. “I started out as a radio operator, and my first posting was to 139 Squadron in Brisbane at Enoggera.”

His first deployment was in support of the Brisbane Commonwealth Games in 1982. He deployed to Papua New Guinea in 1989 to support a survey operation that was mapping the border and served in the embassy communications centre in the United States to support the military staff based there in 1991.

He deployed to Cambodia the following year with 2nd Signals Regiment as part of the peacekeeping mission, the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), to supervise the ceasefire between Cambodia’s warring factions and the subsequent general election.

“It’s a beautiful country with beautiful people,” he said. “They were just getting over terrible times, and you could see that the country was recovering from what it had gone through under the Khmer Rouge.

“There were – and probably still is – a lot of mines around. There was one trip where we came across one of the New Zealand staff engineers. His vehicles had just hit a mine and a Cambodian man who was riding on top of that broke an ankle and ended up dying.

“The Khmer Rouge weren’t overtly active or anything like that at the time – they had hidden away as such in a town called Pailin, so they didn’t really trouble us too much. It was more the problems with banditry that we faced.

“We had an attack one night in Siem Reap. It was 10/11 February 1993, and some bandits were paid to do some robberies for some alleged businessmen working out of Phnom Penh. They basically came in and hit the Angkor Wat conservatorium to get whatever they could.

“They had been advised that there was $50,000 US in a safe in one of the UN office spaces where we were living and they were told that if they could get it, that was their bonus, so they tried to come in and actually get it, but what they didn’t figure on was a bunch of angry Australians who happened to be living there at the time who didn’t appreciate being woken up in the middle of the night.

“In the end the whole town basically erupted because of these bandits and a certain Cambodian People’s Army colonel ended up dying that night.”

It was just the first of the peacekeeping missions Patrick would be involved in. He deployed to East Timor in 1999 to provide communication support as part of the multinational peacekeeping taskforce, INTERFET.

“East Timor was really interesting,” he said. “I met two of the most interesting groups of people I’ve ever met. The first one was the Gurkhas. I’d never met such polite people before in my life who would cut your throat as quick as look at you if you actually did wrong by them. They were awesome soldiers, and then there was the East Timorese themselves, and they were just really grateful as well.”

Less than a decade later, Patrick deployed to Iraq in 2005 and again in 2007 and 2008.

“There was a lot more greenery around that I expected,” he said. “At Camp Victory, which is a massive facility that encompassed Baghdad airport and the rest of it as well, there were actually gum tress that had been imported from Australia, so seeing gum trees, especially ghost gums and the rest of it, in the middle of Iraq and around Camp Victory was really interesting.

“The whole complex was built around this massive lake system which had been built at one stage by Saddam Hussein. There were all these palaces of his, and the rumour was that at one stage he cut off the water to Baghdad in order to fill the lakes.

“Especially around March–April 2008, there were an increased number of indiscriminate rocket attacks. They were just using improvised rocket launchers as such, so point and shoot sorts of things, and you would hear the rockets coming in.

“The alarms go off and all the rest of it and basically you just take cover or lay down wherever you are. You have no idea where, or when, it’s going to land.

“One night, a rocket landed in one of the lakes about 30 metres from the Australian headquarters. The boss’s driver and a clerk were pulling up in a car at the time and they were just stepping out of the car as the rocket landed in the water and they got soaked from the bow wave from the rocket.”

He travelled to Afghanistan as part of his deployment and returned there in 2010. He remembers staying in Kandahar, and hearing about a rocket that had once landed in the room that he was staying in. “It never actually detonated,” he said. “So they found the head buried in the mattress in the bed frame.”

He will never forget attending the ramp ceremonies for the soldiers who were killed while he was serving in Afghanistan.

“There was one guy, and every time I see his widow on TV, or I hear his name, it really gets to me,” he said. “I didn’t know the individual; I didn’t work with the individual; so I can only imagine what his really close mates who worked with him went through.”

For him, the Australian War Memorial is a place to remember their service and sacrifice.

“It’s a place of reflection about the blokes who passed away,” he said. “When I first enlisted, most of my bosses were Vietnam veterans. So, for me, it’s also about remembering them, remembering their struggles, and remembering what they went through when they came home.”

He is pleased the Memorial is expanding to tell the stories of the more recent conflicts and the servicemen and women who have served and are continuing to serve.

“It’s really important,” he said. “We capture all these solemn and dark moments in war, but hopefully with the extension we can capture some of the light-hearted moments that happen as well.

“It’s an ugly business – it’s not a pretty business – but there are some light hearted moments and other elements of the war that people don’t get to see. The work the engineers did with the locals in Afghanistan was fantastic.

“We don’t actually go over there trying to harm people, we’re there to help people, so for veterans to actually be able to visit the Memorial with their families and have the opportunity to share with them what they did, and all the rest of it, is really important. And I think it’s good for veterans to be able to see that.”

Today, Patrick is still active in the Army Reserve and remains passionate about his work with the Army’s indigenous development program and the Defence Forces’ Indigenous pre-recruit program.

“It's a great opportunity for all Australians, regardless of where you come from and what generation you are, to reflect upon the Indigenous background of Australia and promote Indigenous cultures,” he said. “Australia has a 40,000-year-old culture; yes, it was brought to us but Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but all Australians, regardless of when they came to Australia, should be sharing in that, and be proud of that, and should be talking about that.

“Some kids might not necessarily know that they are Aboriginal, or they might not know other elements of their background from their tribal community side of their house, but this is an opportunity where they might be able to learn and find out.

“I’ve been a bit fortunate.”