LAC Sean Eagles reports on his experience of the most recent Junior NCO Course (“Juniors”):
It was amazing I loved almost every part of it (there were a few things like getting up at 6am that I didn’t like). But it was overall cool and anyone who can go on this course should go on this course.
When we arrived we were split into groups known as syndicates. My syndicate had an awesome leader but we unfortunately we lost 2 of our members due to injuries. Some of my favourite things to do on the course were: going swimming, visiting the hotshot’s general store and all the leadership activities.
I met some pretty high ranking officers on my course – I can’t quite remember who specifically but they were up there in the ranks. I had a tonne of fun and made a lot of friends. In total I made 19 new friends. In some of the leadership activities (which I will not reveal, the test ones at least), the challenges were easy in some and hard in others but if you get your team to work together you can get the job done. There were practice leadership challenges and the ones we were tested on, some of the practice ones were things like checking to see if everything for a tent was there or moving a giant cotton reel without letting it touch the ground, there was also a set of triangles that we had to put down in a certain way so you could call in a helicopter to get away from a crazy gunman.
The Mess was great as well, bacon and hash browns every morning for breakfast, and mostly spicy food like butter chicken for lunch and dinner. The food was great and I would happily go back to R.N.Z.A.F. base Ohakea again if I was allowed. So in other words I cannot wait to attend a Senior non commissioned officers course which is the next step up from Juniors.
