386 - Remembering Beyond Remembrance Day

We have two Australian Army veterans as our special guests this episode.

The first is the Vice President of the RSL in South Australia, and President of the Magill RSL Sub Branch, Retired Major Meredith Burgess. Apart from being a mechanic for the Australian Defence Force, she became and Officer and spent much of her career in the role of Quartermaster.

Our second guest is Chairperson and Editor of The Top Ender, Tri-Services Magazine, and founder of Barossa Fun Factory, Deb Herring. Deb's focus on community extends throughout her work at the magazine for veterans as well as being a key part of her business.

If you read this before November 18, 2023, Steve would like you to join him at the Magill RSL Sub Branch for an 80s Trivia Night. He'll be the Quizmaster on behalf of the organisers the Magill Sunrise Rotary Club. Details and tickets here.

The SA Drink Of The Week - no featured drink this week.

And in the Musical Pilgrimage, it's the first birthday of Dino Jag's song, Shake A Leg Like Elvis, so we'll itch that scratch and give it another spin!

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Running Sheet: Remembering Beyond Remembrance Day

00:00:00 Intro

Introduction

00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week

No SA Drink Of The Week this week.

00:03:29 Meredith Burgess

That was a little snippet of the Concert Band and Chorus of the RAAF, singing Quartermaster's Store. I grew up with my dad playing "hits of the war years" over and over again and I always wondered what a quartermaster was. Well, fast forward to today and I am sitting next to a woman who has spent some of her army career as a quartermaster. I refer to Retired Major, Meredith Burgess.

Meredith, we're sitting in the Magill RSL Sub Branch, where you are President (she is also Vice President of the RSL in South Australia) and on November 18, 2023, I'll be quiz master for an 80s trivia quiz being run by the Magill Sunrise Rotary Club to raise money for your programs here. Before we talk about them, and before you help me wrap my head around the role of a quartermaster, there is some South Australian business to attend to.

You grew up in the wheat and sheep area of Lameroo and finished your schooling in Murray Bridge. What do you remember most about life in that part of Australia at that time?

I worked for 7 years at 5MU and would often drive out to regional towns to do interviews in my HG70 panel van without any knowledge of mechanics. Was the tyranny of distance part of the reason that attracted you to getting under the hood? In other words, was it a simple survival mechanism?

This drive you had for motor mechanics and metal fabrication led you to TAFE and then you joined the Army Apprentice School at Albury-Wodonga in the second class of female trainees where only 4 out of 13 graduated. My daughters have demanded that I ask you to share what it was like being outnumbered on grounds of gender and what enabled you to get through and then later get encouraged to undertake training as an officer at Duntroon?

You've had various roles as quartermaster, what is it, in layperson's terms because to the best of my knowledge it was the person responsible for making sure supplies got to where they're needed?