Whose Name We Share

51 Compered by comedy duo Roy and HG, the concert featured acts by John Farnham, Doc Neeson, Gina Jeffreys, James Blundell, The Living End, Dili Allstars and the RMC Band. Peter Carthew, the BC’s ack at the time had also spent enough time backstage to score himself a photo with Kylie Minogue. Surrounding the main stadium was also a free concert from a Rastafarian who had deployed across to Dili. The atmosphere was colourful and excitable, so much so that the main stadium doors had to be blocked with an APC to prevent access. A bombardier from the 103 CML had jumped up onto the stage of the free concert, much to the musician’s surprise. They were teasing and dissing him as he stood in front of the mike but he took the stage with Green Day’s Time of Your Life and to everyone’s surprise the locals were absolutely enthralled. The musicians revoked their previous statements immediately and backed him up on the song. This time spent in Timor for the Battery as a whole was able to set the stage to allow East Timor to develop as an independent nation and to allow sufficient space to allow democracy to emerge. Additionally, facilitating reconstruction after significant devastation was a hallmark of the battery’s contribution and hopefully to allow peace to return. The BC of the time, MAJ Finney, said that looking back they provided a good opportunity to the East Timorese, it was by no means perfect, but we haven’t had to go back since. The Battery’s deployment in 1999 set up the other deployments for success as they continued rotations and above all it demonstrated the value of a combined arms team as prior to this the artillery corps was seen exclusively as people who fired guns. MAJ Finney handed over to BC Craig Farini, who would see out the rest of the deployment and on February 21 st 2000, the operation transitioned into the United Nations Transitional Administration East Timor (UNATAET) operation called Operation Tanager. The Battery then became the first RAA unit to serve not only on a UN operation, but also under UN command. The Battery provided the entire Civil Military Liaison element for the 5 th /7 th battalion for the duration of the operations.