23 December - Firepower Demonstration

Today the plan was for Emma and I to go to the settlement of Fitzroy some 45 minutes into 'the camp' as the locals call the area outside the towns. This would have been a trip down memory lane for me, a place I visited when previously here. However, as it turned out the plan changed somewhat.

After pottering around the garden with Emma, a massive affair behind Government House largely turned over to growing fruit, vegetables and flowers for the benefit of the occupants, I jumped in the car with Nigel and we headed back to the military camp 30 miles into the island. He had been invited to a 'firepower' demonstration by the army, the military still has a significant presence here, and I was now invited too.

All those invited - some fifty of us both civilian and military - met at the social club on the camp. This building, with a small cinema, coffee bar and bowling alley, had not been there in my time. Neither had the small clutch of nearby houses for people filling key posts on two year tours; everyone was on a four month detachment in the 1980s. In many other respects however I was again taken back over thirty years by the startlingly familiar. The club house and housing were of the same squat green, single storey and industrial design that made up the rest of the base, buildings spread along the main camp road just as I recalled them. They appeared not to have changed at all. And the oppressive temperature in the club conjured up another reminder, a memory of the wall of heat you encountered whenever you entered the buildings all those years ago.

The firepower display itself was on an open hilly area even further in the middle of nowhere than the Mount Pleasant base. Nigel and I were familiar with them from our military days; a demonstration of capabilities intended to educate and inform more than entertain. It was however very, very windy and the voices and information of those commentating largely got snatched away in the gusts. Nevertheless, an afternoon of bangs and smoke and explosions kept the masses generally entertained and after the main display was over Nigel and I headed back in the late afternoon to Stanley to spend a quiet evening relaxing in the comfort of Government House sharing wine, memories and thoughts.