Australian SAS Operator | Mark Direen | Ep. 348

Special Operations, cobert O.

Spionage.

The Team House with your hosts Jack Murphy and David Park.

Hi folks, I'm Jack Murphy.

This is The Team House episode three hundred and forty eight, and our guest on tonight's show is Mark Dereen. He served in the Australian military, including the Australian Special Air Service, multiple deployments to Afghanistan and a couple other places.

A lot to talk.

About here actually, from his time in the conventional infantry all the way to today where he is a expedition and adventure travel guide.

So Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us.

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's a huge honor and pleasure. You've had some phenomenal guests on this podcast.

But I don't think we have had a Australian SAS guy on the show unfortunately until now.

So I'm glad we can make.

Up for that, jeez.

So Mark, tell us a little bit about you know, your upbringing and how you grew up and sort of how that eventually took you towards military service.

Yeah.

I grew up in Tasmania, the little island right down the bottom of Australia and I've moved back to live here now, but.

Yeah, Tassy was a pretty.

Small place growing up here in the eighties, and I didn't leave. Dad was a trap driver and sort of Mum worked night shifts stacking supermarket shelves, and we didn't. I didn't leave Tazzy at all. I don't think until I was almost ready to join the army. I think I went to Melbourne one weekend to watch the footy. But yeah, growing up, Dad was a big fisherman. We used to go hunting a fair bit, you know, lot of time our bush, going camping and and things like that.

I don't know if this reference means anything to you, but it is Tasminia sort of like the West Virginia of Australia. It's like a very remote, out of the way place.

Yeah, we've got it is out of the way.

I mean, I'm an our plane flight to Melbourne, which is sort of one of the biggest cities in Australia, but I think it's a third of our island is uninhabited.

It's like National Park, and it's a long way out there.

We get some wild weather, especially in our south and southwest coast, so a bit of snow on the mountains. We're a fair way south from the equator, so it gets a wild weather, and there's a lot of remote areas.

And the vast majority.

Of our population sits along the Hobart and the east coast and the north coast of Tazzy.

So yeah, it's pretty pretty rugged in spots.

I so military service, like, what was it as like a young guy, you said you hadn't even you know, left the whole island until just before you joined. I mean, what was it that kind of took you out into the world like that?

Yeah, I think I had a little bit of an interest in the military growing up. I used to read a few Vietnam novels, if you like, and watched a few Vietnam movies. But I actually wanted to be a moto mechanic because I loved I suppose probably Dad burn a truck driver, and I love motorbikes and things like that.

AIR.

That was ninety three.

I think I joined the Army Reserve for six months, which is like our National service, I think sort of part time. I did that for only about six months, but then when I enlisted into the regular Army, they took me right back to the start to do the full basic training and full infantry IAT training.

You know.

The way it's been described to me is that the Australian military has like a small but very professional military, like, it's actually very hard to qualify just to get into the military in general.

I've had people tell.

Me, Yeah, I don't know so much about today. I do read in the papers that recruiting levels are low, so I'm not sure whether it's easier to get in or not.

Yeah.

Back then, as I said, the reason I joined the Armor Reserve in ninety two was because they weren't taking regular Army infantry.

They were full up.

And they are only taking reservist and another scheme that they had called the Ready Reserve, which was twelve months full time, and I didn't want to do that. I just wanted to enlist into the regular Army and sign up from a four years service. So yeah, there was a lot of testing that did a lot of aptitude testing and side testing and things like that. Yeah, as you said, pretty small military and even today, pretty highly trained, I think being small.

And so, how did our infantry training treat you as a young man?

I loved it? Yeah, it was it was great. It was hard work.

I mean, the recruit training wasn't really a shock because I'd done the little Army reserve bit.

You know, it was you got tortured a bit, but that was fine.

Infantry training I really enjoyed because we didn't We no longer had to sort of march around the parade ground and do what we call drill less theory and more just going out bush and practicing our patrolling and ambushing and defensive and offensive operations. Lots of weaponry and a learning machine guns and claymores and yeah it was hard work. They tortured us as they do with with pt and stuff.

But I enjoyed it. Yeah, and it was.

And as I said, I hadn't left Tazzi before I joined the Army, so all of a sudden, I'm up in New South Wales. We could go down to Sydney or Newcastle for the weekend and it was the big city and pretty foreign to me after a sheltered childhood. And what was the first unit you got assigned to. I was the first Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment we call it. A few of the instructors I had on my on my initial employment training or my basic infantry

It is.

And so tell us a little bit about like kind of proceeding through the ranks, like you served in a rifle platoon, a recomp platoon, a snaper platoon. It sounds like you're kind of enjoying what you were doing and wanted more and more of it.

Yeah, when I first got to the to the battanon, I mean, promotion was pretty slow in the nineties.

People didn't really get out too quickly.

A lot of guys I think, stayed in after their Somali deployment. They enjoyed that operational service, you know, doing the job overseas, and so not a lot of people get out got out.

Promotion was slow.

When I got to the battin it was just as they changed over from what we call a mag fifty eight.

Machine gunner seven sixty two machine gun.

They changed over at the time when I got there to a five point five to six machine gun, a minimi, and we had two machine guns per section, so I carried a machine gun from my first twelve months, the number two gun we called it. But my second year in the army, I was the lead scout of my ten man section. I think we had about eight in our section at the time, and it was I suppose doing that scouting job for twelve months.

It's where I started to get.

It a little bit of passion for leading the way I suppose, like being the guy at the front, and from being a scout.

That's where I did.

Our reconcourse, which was a pretty tough course they ran in the Batanion back then, I'm sure it still is today. It was a six week course. They punished you with PT. There wasn't really a high dropout. Maybe one or two out of a course of about twenty five about platoon size would sort of drop out, but it was pretty tough.

Mvgs.

The tactics were probably still pretty similar to what they used in Vietnam.

I suppose, so I really enjoyed that training.

Now, and also we're in the nineteen nineties here, so I'm wondering, you know what you guys were training for. I understand you're doing basic infantry and I guess advanced infantry training here. What was there, like a mission set or a particular Australian national security threat that you were training for at that time.

Yeah, well, I mean we trained for war, I think a lot more than specifically. But the battalion I was in was what they called the ODEF Battalion, and every twelve months we swapped with two r ur and one of our tasks was to go overseas and help do services assisted evacuation.

There was.

A South Pacific nation, for example, that had a lot of Australian expats living there and civil unrest occurred. We would be tasked with going over to perhaps secure an airfield so that they could help evacuate Australian citizens. That was one of the sort of specific jobs we trained for, I suppose, But now I mostly just you know what we call war roles.

I suppose defending the nation.

Was this around the same time frame when you went to East Team or.

Yes, I moved to the sas by all the time.

Okay, well let's talk about before we get into team more.

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Yeah, the reconnaissance course, as I said, spent twelve months.

They really enjoyed that.

And I think going to the battalion sniper cell was kind of this to me, it seemed like this natural progression.

I'd gone from working in a platoon strength.

Sort of environment down to a four or five man recon patrol and then I just wanted to move into that sort of one to two person sniper pair operating. And yeah, I hadn't been on operations yet. I think I went to y once with the Batain on a training activity with the Marines there, and I just it

They just they give it a go.

At the time, the ESSAYS was the only full time special Forces unit in the Australian Army. And yeah, again probably naive, but I didn't know a lot about the ESSAYS I just signed up to do the selection course because it sounded challenging and it would seem like a natural progression all for people that I had looked up to.

In the Bataan had to have to go at some stage.

Some came back because they didn't weren't selected, and then there were these other guys that you never heard from again. They just went off to the essays and you didn't know what they were doing now. So yeah, it just gave it a crap. What was the hardest part of selection for you? Yeah, it was just generally hard, I suppose towards the end it runs over several weeks.

It's sort of ebbs and.

Flows by a day here or there, but normally about three weeks and it's running into the last week that they sort of really lift the work rate. They stopped feeding you, they start the sleep deprivation and things like that sage. It's not like one event. I don't think for me that was super difficult. It was just like the further you got into the course, the more drained you were, you know, the more exhausted you became, the less food and sleep they.

Gave you, the harder it got. There were a few events that.

Were a bit like arrest for me, I suppose, coming from that recon and sniper background, I was pretty good with my navigation, and we did a couple of solo and navigation exercises on selection.

It ran for two or three days.

I think one ran for three days, had to navigate around a field training area, did about one hundred and.

Ten kilometers or so in full gear.

But I kind of enjoyed that one because I had no directing staff barking down giving me push ups for not having my water bottles full or something like that. You know, Like that was the bit where I got left alone. Even they had to do a lot of walking so that they were good. But yeah, it just got hard towards the end for me, as it does for most people.

I do recall.

It must have been like maybe within the last five days or so. They gave us a two hour period to sleep one night, and so within our little team there was probably about five of us or so left in our little patrol, and we just divi it up whatever whatever.

The amount of time was. I can't remember. Maybe twenty minutes picket.

And you could sleep for the rest of the two hours, and I hit my twenty minute picket and I actually couldn't physically stay awake. I can remember, and one of the guys that was in my team was from the sniper section in Towns were with me. It was just sheer coincidence that we both applied for selection, both got as far as we did in it, and to that point we were both in the same team. It was

I'm so then talk to us a little bit about after selection and going into sas training.

What was the pipeline like.

Yeah, so our selection course is exactly that. It's the only course in the Australian military at the time and for a long time after. I mean, I'm not current now, but it's the only course in Australian military where it was that was not designed to teach you anything. It was purely designed to test you. So they ran that three week course break you down, find out who you are, and just decide whether.

They want you in the unit.

And so if you got selected from the selection course, it was that they deemed you suitable for training. We then went into a For me, it was a bit over twelve months, about twelve month period where we did all our courses to go to an operational squadron and

You know, everything was very budget restricted.

And we got to the SAS and it was kind of like here, you can shoot as much as you need to, just you got to pass these shoots. The training was was excellent, and we just did lots of it for twelve months. Whether the course ran for five days or whether it ran for two or three five weeks. You'd finish course one course on a Friday and you'd start your next one on the Monday. As long as you passed.

Most guys. I mean my selection course, we had.

I think about a thousand or twelve hundred or something apply. We had about one hundred and twenty or thirty start the actual selection course, we had twenty eight finish, and I think we had about we had twenty five selected, so there's only about three or so that didn't get selected off the course, and then out of that twenty five or so we only had one or two fail.

It was.

For me what we called our basic close quarter battle course, where you do room entry and you had to get good with the whole suite of weapons. I mean they trained us on the M four because Australian Army.

Used the OSTA.

But yeah, not only the M four, you'd be I mean it was my introduction to pistol shooting. I hadn't done pistol shooting before that, and that was pretty difficult to pass. Yet I only had a few weeks to get up to speed to pass the qualification shoot.

We did the H and K weapons systems and things like that.

Yeah, but the actual reinforcement title a lot of courses. One of the first ones was an actual reconnaissance course. In the Sas they called it the patrol course. It was a bit similar to the reconnaissance course i'd done. It was out in the field in the bush environment, five man patrols, close target reconnaissance, things like that, but it was a lot more special operations focus than I'd done in one hour.

In one hour, we had three methods of insertion.

We either walked in, got a truck, or we were which we thought was quite special, qualified to repel out of helicopters. So we did a lot of black Hawk repelling into the jungle and things like that. Even on my basic patrol course in the Sas, the half a dozen training patrols, I think we had to swim in on one from the ocean, we walked in on one. We had a light aircraft insertion on another one sort of an agent sort of insertion, things like that. So

Operator.

So we did truck courses, driving courses, forward driving courses. At the time we had our six wood patrol vehicles. We did a motorbike course, and we did a quad course and things like that, and then the whole suite of the courses that everyone else does. Close quarter battle,

Survival course was a good one.

I've done a few survival courses already, but they dumped us in the jungle in North Queensland again for a few weeks, a lot of training over the twelve months.

It was great.

And just to speak for a moment about the mission of the SAS, like, correct me if I'm wrong. I've heard that the core mission of the SAS is a strategic reconnaissance and unconventional warfare.

Is that?

Yeah, that's pretty accurate when you sort of say.

A core mission.

It was definitely sort of our core mission was that long range strategic reconnaissance.

When I joined in.

Saying that though Australia, as we always already said, is a small military and the SAS at the time would do whatever the conventional military wouldn't do. So even in training quite a lot they'd come up with scenarios.

We need this effect, how are we're going to do it?

And it was up to the squadron commander and the patrol commander to come up with some ideas on how they might achieve this goal or achieve this effect in the battle space.

One of the things we had mentioned to me is you know, of course the Australian mility, terry and Australian defense for US is being small. You guys also have the domestic counter terrorism mission. And you said you worked security for the Olympics in two thousand.

Yeah, so, because I was.

A sniper in the infantry brittaion as soon as I finished my reinforcement cycle, our sniper training within the SAS was more of an advanced skill set and so when you came, and we also rotated through a system we used to they don't do it anymore where we had three operational saber squadrons as we called them, and they

The second year they did what was called war roles.

You were the one that was ready to go overseas on a moment's notice. If that's what was required, and then the third year you did the domestic count of terrorism, which was something that the SAS developed before my time, probably in the late seventies and through the period of the eighties they really developed the domestic counter terrorism themselves a lot because they didn't have much capability sort of

The Olympic Games.

Were in mid two thousand, I think, and so I got sent to do the SAS sniper courses shortly after I got to my operational squadron so that I could go into sniper troop for the Sydney Olympic Games.

That was good. That was pretty long.

You did a sniper course which was kind of six weeks, similar to the to the standard military one. It was field craft and navigation and you know, getting good at your basic war roles, sniping tasks, learning how to stalk and all that sort of stuff. Again, not a lot of laser range finders and stuff around in those days, so you're doing judging distance activities and.

You finish that, and then I, after the six week.

Sniper course, went on basic sniper course for the SAS, went onto a counter terrorism sniper course which.

Was a lot more urban.

Containing a stronghold where the terrorists were and things like that.

And so doing security for the Olympics.

Was that were you in sort of like a counter sniper role in this particular case.

Yeah, we did.

We did a lot of training in the lead up to the Olympics in sort of late ninety nine. We're spending time in Sydney conducting a lot of mission rehearsals. And we had a few other roles within the sniper troop. Obviously the support the assault troops. We had a couple of assault troops and we would support them, so they would quite often maybe you want approach shooters for leading into a target or.

Different bits and pieces.

We used to I used to do a lot of liaison with military, with civilian assets, emergency services and things like that. But then once the sort of Olympic Games rolled around, we were just on standboy in.

The back of a truck weaving.

Ah.

No, I suppose funly and quite good for us. Was we would go to the venues. Basically, what was a bit of a dead giveaway for the security guys at the Olympics was we had these Olympic passes that would let us go anywhere no one else had them, and so we had every letter of the alphabet and every symbol you could get on you on your pass.

And quite often you're going to watch a sport.

I mean I've got to fortunately got to see every event, I think every international sport at the Olympics, but quite often would get stopped by the security guard at the entrance because he thought my pass was fake because it just had too many too much access on it. But we'd go and go and watch the events and remain on call, and we'd have to supply guys to the DO liaison with just the security control centers and things like that.

Just be ready to go.

And tell us a little bit about East Team War. This is I take it pre nine to eleven or right around that time frame. This was sort of the thing that Australia had going on at the time.

Yeah, and while the Sydney Olympic Game seemed like a huge blessing.

When I got sent to that squadron in ninety nine.

It was pretty shortly after that we were in training for the Olympics in Sydney and East Team OR kicked off, so a different squadron was the first one to deploy the East Team OR in nineteen ninety nine. East Team OR for the Australian Military went on for a long time.

It was great to be.

There in the lead up to the election to go and see the rallies for voting and things like that.

Yeah. I really enjoyed my timing Team OR and.

A classic I suppose SF role that we had for the six or seven months I was there.

My team we.

Did that basic sort of field reconnaissance conduct ops ground truthing. We would roll through a QRF where every now and then if they were militia coming across the border, we'd get a call out to go down and rope in and conduct a tracking task to try and chase up the militia. I did VIP protection for some of the Australian diplomats that wanted to come to East Team or to.

Visit the troops.

So it was we did some humanitarian a patrols which were hugely rewarding, where we would just go out to remote villages just to sort of do that classic sort of ground truthing and collecting of information. But at the same time we would do medical clinics for people that didn't really have access to any health care or anything

Or anything like that.

It was amazing to sort of see some of those things from a medical perspective.

So yeah, big variety in roles. We did no real connetic no contacts for me.

I mean, I tracked down a few militia and things like that, a lot of small style stuff. But there was a bit of fighting in each team or with militia, but it all occurred before I got there. So my six month deployment was pretty quiet but super interesting. I mean it was the first time I'd been overseas ands carrying live rounds and operations and.

I was, yeah, I was.

I was out there in the bush with militia, so they they would have had a crack if they could have got if they thought they could have got away with it.

And then nine to eleven happens, And I mean I want to ask you, like, did the Australian sas think that they were going to be a part of this war on terror immediately?

I mean what was sort of the thought process for you guys?

Yeah?

For me, actually, September eleven, I was in East Team or and I was cleaning my gear to return back to Australia. It was the end of my deployment, and we were based at a place outside Dilley in the hills, and the next morning I was scheduled to wake up, drive back to Dilly and jump on a plane back to Australia, and someone came actually running into my tent I was sleeping in a tent in our little compound and sort of said, hey, man, you've got to come

Maybe days.

It's hard to remember but it was pretty shortly after I got back to Perth that I spoke to a few of my friends, a few of my good mates, some that i'd done selection with or served in the battalion with, but they are in a different squadron to me, and they were like, hey, the whole squadron's gone to Afghan So that was yeah, and you know, shortly after late two thousand and one, Yeah, they knew it was a big deal and Australia was pretty keen to support you guys, support our American allies.

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And at what point did your squadron get brought into it?

Yeah, we did that first twelve months.

We did four month deployments and my squadron was the last one to go, so I think my deployment was around mid two thousand and two until December We got home just before Christmas in two thousand and two.

But yeah, again.

I can up to the deployment with it was for me at the time, it was pretty happy. Again, didn't get into any big battles or anything like that, arrested a few militia, but by the time I got there in mid two thousand and two, it had quietened down a fair bit.

I suppose.

The Taliban that could get across the border in the Pakistan had done so, and they were sort of lying low to see how things were going to play out, and so there were still a few criminals about. We drove through one too many mindfields by accident, but not Yeah, we didn't get into any shootouts.

Part of the we're in Afghanistan, were you at that time?

The first squadron first essays squadron that went, I'm pretty sure based out of Kanadheart, but the second two based out of Bagram Bagrom was sort of up and running by then. But in saying that, I mean that the employment for me wasn't spent in Bagram. We flew into Bagram, we got the vehicles. We had our six will long range patrol vehicles in country. The squadron, the mobility troupe that was there before mine handed the vehicles over to us.

It because we needed fuel and food.

But every few weeks us schnook could come in and bring us fuel and food and we'd set out again on another two weeks stint.

And say my four month deployment.

I actually only did three three patrols, or only did three jobs. The first one was that long range patrol down the border. We rolled the cars off a herk in Jelalabad and just patrolled talking to the locals, ground truthing, and it was pretty amazing down through cowst which Is obviously had been a bit of a hub for the Taliban through the eighties and nineties.

I think visited some really interesting spots that have been bombed.

Sort of straight after nine to eleven, at the end of that trip, we came back to Bagram and we flew out and did I think.

It was about a six day op.

They just dropped our patrol back in the field after we spent a day in a day or two in base.

Having a hot feed.

And it was actually an American I think I can't remember, might have been tenth Mountain. We're doing this sweep down a valley and clearing some villages, and so we just dropped on the hill for the five days pre pre that operation and just sort of you know, fed back to headquarters before the actual job and then while they

I probably didn't appreciate it. I thought it was going to be the norm.

But to my last deployment where I don't think I stayed in the field overnight because we were just flying in and out targeting, we lived with the locals. We would actually quite often be driving around, you know, we'd hide in the in the field a lot, you know, go into it a layoup point and run pickets. But then often we talk to locals in a village and they'd say, hey, come stay with us, and they would have chai and they'd give us dinner, and it's amazing.

I think which was really good.

And so yeah, I've heard that some of the American commanders really loved you guys, and I think maybe the Danish and maybe the Norwegians also because your wreckie guys can stay out in the field for so long when the Danes are like, yeah, we can occupy that op for twenty days, and they're like, whoa, our teams can only do it for like four days, Like what the hell? And you're talking about fifty sixty day patrols. I mean that's pretty hardcore.

Yeah, I mean we had our vehicles and we and that was my bread and butter.

We could live out of our vehicles.

I mean we would changed the gearbox and we had a gearbox go in a car, and so we did the new gearboxing and set it out to the field and we changed it out.

You guys are the descendants of you know, the long range desert patrol right from World War Two.

Yeah, yeah, well we like to think so that was certainly pretty epic. Those blokes hardcore, But yeah, we just we stayed in the field. They I mean, we initially got that job. My this is my understanding, and it's a story that was told to me or wasn't there obviously, but when our sort of our second squadron was in country, I think the first squadron that was, you know, a.

Torah borer, and they did a lot of ops and.

We had an American We didn't have our own j A tax back in two thousand and one, so it was around that tourrible at the time we realized, hey, we need this skill set inherent in our patrols, and so we take American JTEX.

But they did a lot of.

Aping, they did a lot of certain they were still looking for the Taliban a lot. I mean, one of my major jobs in two thousand and two was still asked the locals where someone.

Bin Ladnis, which we did.

We drove around the border looking asking the locals, Yeah, he's over that way, they were telling us then. But by the time our second squadron got there, I suppose the fighting had died down a fair bit. America said to us, what can you do, how can you help us? What capabilities can you provide? And whoever our CA was at the time sort of just went well, my guys

But there was then just huge impressed that.

Yeah, we went out into the field for sixty nine days and didn't come back, and it's just kept punching in.

Report after report after report, just been to this village. They haven't they thought we were Russian. They haven't seen anyone here since the Russians were here type thing.

There was a lot of that. Yeah.

Yeah, it's a difficult job, but you know, you guys being so morbile and being out there for so long, you got a lot done. And like you said, delivering ground truth to the commanders, there's a lot of that.

Yeah.

Yes, And if we had oh god, I'm sorry, go ahead, Oh I was.

Going to say, if we could have, if it had a state sort of that. I mean, my longer opinions of the whole thing was a smaller force, we've probably been better and if we had have kept doing what we're doing back then, might have worked out to be better for us.

But we were trying to keep people safe too.

What was the second deployment to Afghanistan. How is it different than the first.

I didn't go back until two thousand seven. The essays sort of went back twelve months before that, So my second deployment was two thousand and seven, and by that time the Australian military had been given the province of Urezgan to help with. I mean there was Americans obviously there,

Reconnaissance of this sort of environment.

We were doing reconnaissance to push the Taliban back out of TK because they were trying to come back and impose their dominance.

They definitely they'd come back in force.

To take back over, and so we were literally trying to push the teleban back out of TK as far as we could so that the reconstruction effort could get in there, so that the newly flagling Afghan military could get in there and provide the security.

And that was the full SATG task Force.

Now with an it was no longer an Essays squadron that I deployed within two thousand and two. It was just an Essays troop and a commando company, So it was a pretty.

Combat capable unit.

The old SATG in Afghanistan right back from two thousand and six.

How was that relationship, that working relationship, like with the commandos, Like I know they're historically there's been some rivalries, but I also would like to ask you, like, how do they work together? Like how did that work out for you guys? Because there's a lot of capability there too.

Yeah, and it's obviously well documented that it was pretty strained over the years.

We did some joint operations. I mean I did some.

I did some support tasks for commando sweeps where you know they classic sas control weekend holder put in an ap on a mountain twenty four hours before the commandos came in for a sweep. We did that a couple of times. I think I think it's some of the interunit rivalry, and I sort of, in my opinion, interunit rivalry can be good.

We definitely had.

It when I was in an infantry BATTAI and our brother of battalion two our hour across the road.

We used to get stuck into each other all the time.

Perhaps over the years the commando sas interunit rivalry went a bit fart as in there was a bit of dislike on some people. But I will clarify with some people, so I never really it. I had mates and commandos and and I think regardless of commando or sas, a lot of the guys, most guys were focused on their job, were getting as good at their job as they could get. And a few blakes that were worried about what the other guy was doing. I think they were mind already personally.

Level giving a bit.

More direction on rolls and tasks. There was a bit of blurring of roles and tasks there. If they wanted to me, yeah, if they wanted us to do the same task, will come out and say that they kind of never really did want us to do the same task, I don't think. But it was a huge gray space, and soldiers don't work well in that grade space.

They need, they need their.

Missions given to them, you know, you know, we want to know what the strategic contend is so we can help achieve.

It, right.

Yeah, I think the unit of we was blown out of proportion by the media.

Trying to you know, trying to find a story that was going to get lots of clicks.

It was never as bad as.

It did exist, but it was probably mostly existing by people that were more worried about what the other person was doing and less about what they were doing.

Yeah, it sounds like it's more a few individuals in each unit rather than an actual unit rivalry.

Yeah, it would probably come and go on a particular deployment. Who were the big personalities on that deployment on both side guides and made clash a bit.

Yeah.

And around this timeframe you also did a trip over to Iraq.

Yeah.

Well, I was in Afghan in two thousand and seven, which I openly say to most people now, two thousand and seven was my introduction to war. We we got shot out a lot, We got into quite a few ticks, fortunately for me, a big battles, but we got into quite a few skirmishes, I suppose we we caught and killed a few bad guys.

But it was mid that two thousand and seven trip that.

I think it was the Defense Minister from Australia was doing a trip to the what we called THEAO, the Middle East Area of Operations, and so they sent two of the teams we had to meeting in the Middle East flying to Bagdad so he could visit the troops I was, the troops that were there, and then fly him into Kabok, afghan to visit the Aussie troops there, take him back to the Middle East and then get back into Afghanistan and recontinue operations.

So I focused my time.

For the protective duty in Iraq. But it was pretty simple. It was kind of just a bit of an eye opener for me. I mean I landed it the by app I Court. I think it was the Rhino. They had this armored bus that would drive you from the airport into the greens Aint.

Oh yeah.

We were just talking about this, like maybe on the last episode up arms.

Yeah, we'll wear Ossie's and they're like, hey, we need you to go and do some wrekis of the of the locations that the Minister wants to visit, the US embassy and.

All this and it's like, oh, yeah, well, how do we get in there? I will just catch the bus.

So we got on the bus and yeah, good old as military drove into town. We got off the bus at the bus terminal, which I from memory was just nearby the US embassy was up the road or something, and got morted, which I'd been morted a few times in afghan but not standing in the middle of a city like that was the bit that I was like, this joins.

A bit of a spin out.

And there was some contacts nearby or whatever, and morted as in my medic who was with me actually had to give first aid to someone I think it got hit by shrapnel.

We got moretered in the bus stop. We did that job.

We had Ossie trainers out on a few little fobs around Baghdad, so we literally one obviously had helos when the minister came in to fly him around and there for a few weeks and then headed back to afghan to get back into the war fighting again.

Yeah, well tell us about going back to Afghanistan.

Ah, yeah, we we were doing still doing vehicle operations, but obviously a lot more kinetic everywhere we went.

Someone to chewed out us spiders watching us all the time.

Because you're in cars, it's pretty hard to hide, especially in Risgaran, I mean you're driving around deserts, and so we would drive down valleys basically put in a vehicle layout point sort of in the desert. And back then we could still operate at night, so we do night patrols through the green zone. Have a lot of good effect doing that, catch lots of bad guys moving around at night. But yeah, we'd sort of that was our

Yeah, any success doing that was pretty difficult to quote.

No, absolutely, some of the best success I suppose were we'd be moving in valleys and.

The enemy would think that we were still out with our vehicles basically camped out for the night, and so they would be starting to move around between villages or visit the villagers to ask them. You know, this is what I think they were doing. So we could literally just go down fully knotted up patrol around. They had

And this this stuff is actually really serious.

Yeah, you must have had some sense that it was obviously getting more intense with each deployment.

Yeah, that was.

And that was east of Taran Cott, in a place called the Mirranbad Valley. There was a lot of fighting out that way. That sort of ran from the eastern side of Afghan ran into the Uruzgan province, came down past.

Pardon me.

The valley sort of started out near Casare's Gharan, which was near a fog called Anaconda, which saw a lot of fighting. Had an American eight A team there for a while, And it was coming back from there that I got myself blown up, drove over an Id and the next year it was where Mark Donalds and the Australian SAS guy won his Victoria Cross in the in the ambush where.

He rescued the interpreter.

So there was a lot of enemy movement around that that valley. The Dutch used to get hit out there a lot, and badly. They lost a few blakes out there on that deployment I was on in two thousand and seven, So a lot of our fighting sort of east of tk and north around Shura. We got into a few fights north of Tku. And actually just after my deployment, I think about a month after that was where good mate of mine, Matt Locke got killed in a shootout.

I think that was about October.

O seven, wow.

And yeah, lots of fighting we were.

We were catching bags I mean there was one occasion where we literally pulled up in our cars. We'd drive off the road. This looks like an area we can defend if we need to. We'll stop here and have

And as the too, I see you normal foot movements.

You stay at the back of the trail, cover the rear and make sure no one gets left behind, and from the back the lead scout open fire across the river, and as soon as he did, I could then look up because it was pretty open until you got to the other side of the river, and then it was kind of classic Afghan orchards and trees and compounds, and I could see the two guys sort of returning fire but making a run for it, mostly just to sort

If you liked.

They full the overhead protected sand bagged big logs covering them up, and it was basically like a perfect in trenched ambush position facing.

Where we'd exactly stopped.

So if they'd had the fighters on the day, we would have got our asses handed to us. But fortunately for us, they didn't know we were coming, and unfortunately for those two guys, they didn't expect us to get out of our cars and clear across the river. But yeah, all of a sudden, you're staying one step ahead of them because you're doing everything right, but you're doing night

You're better trained, you've got better.

Gear, and then during the daytime you're clearing through entrenched areas.

I mean it's.

From before that, from sort of my East team all time and a lot of training in an infantry pertained you get to the point where you're like, holy cow, this is actually really serious and even if you do everything right, you can still come unstuck one day, just through she bad luck. Yeah, and that's the life we chose.

To live, I suppose.

And it sounds like after that you guys were feeling more of kind of like a straight counter terrorism roar.

Yeah, that was a weird blend between still sort of doing reconnaissance affair bit but trying to be as kinetic as we can.

We're still trying to.

Degrade the anti coalition malicious capability. We're really trying to put the pressure on them so that the military behind us can get in and fixed stuff. That My deployment ended when I drove over an I D and it was up at that five anaicondas, so the American team that was based there. Literally I don't know how they word got through, but they sent word down to the Assies, Hey, can anyone come up and give us a hand.

We're having a really tough month.

And they were basically just getting shot at every second day, whether it was sort of direct weapons, rockets, machine guns. They actually, on I think a couple of occasions, the enemy put in frontal assaults on their on their compound, which was a bit of you go from that mindset where we're chasing one, one and two bad guys around a paddock to getting to the end of towards the end of your trip and the enemy are actually massing in numbers to overrun outposts. It's like, yeah, this is

A lot of bad guys up there.

We drove round in our cars, which they literally couldn't do. Six months later, pushed the enemy back. Commandos came up and did a massive sweep through and they got into a few big gun shootouts as well up there. But it was on the way back from that operation that that I drove over the I D and it was really again trying to maneuver around the battlefield with cars in an environment that's super difficult to maneuver around. When we left, I'll tell the story if you like it quickly.

We left the fob after a couple of weeks to head back.

To Tarran count The only way we could get back is drive our cars back, and there's actually.

Only two roads back.

One you drive straight down the valley to TK, down that mir and Bad valley to get back, or you drive sort of north, go over the mountain range into the Chora area and then come back into TK from the north.

We had two call signs up there.

The commandos had their company up there as well, and obviously they'd been doing a fair bit of fighting over the last few days as well, and they got into a few ticks on the way back also. But as the SAS troop, we went, well we'll take them. We'll take the northern route, go over the mountains. I didn't want to just drive out of the fob, noting that they could be putting id's in the road.

We had to go through the town center.

That's pretty dangerous, so we patrolled on foot for twenty for about twelve hours prior through the night, just my team, and by this stage as well, my team leader had injured his back and so he'd been he'd gone out of the field, and I just basically got a field promotion to team leader, got another guy to fill in, so he still had a six man team, but got a field promotion, and I've been the team leader I suppose maybe three or four weeks. We patrolled through that

On roads any longer. Well, that sort of mid that morning, we got.

A message from headquarters saying that there was an enemy commander in a particular village that we were going to be driving past, and so we stopped nearby, put out fire support teams on the high ground, and in one of the patrols went down into that village to try and locate this target that was down there. They messed around for a few hours, couldn't find him. But we kind of knew that something was up because there were

Out as quick as we can.

And to compound our problems that day, we actually blew some CV joints in our vehicles, so we had two vehicles break down, which we had to fix on top of the mountain.

We could fix them.

By either replacing the CV or just taking it out and not using six will drive anymore, but it's obviously time consuming to do it. When we're on top of the mountain fixing the cars, I said to the boss, the troop commander of the troop, I'll take my team forward and I'll try and clear down this valley, this really thin valley we've got to drive through, because that'll deny the enemy of the use of the ground. Obviously, we want to get to the next valley where we

Far as I could sort of go.

The boss had given me a bit of a control measure in the fact that he sort of said, don't go any further than this grid point. And so I got to what I thought was that grid point and the sort of high ground both sides. I was on a bit of a flat bit with a creek, and it was only about one hundred meters wide, I think.

And we waited there for a few minutes.

But what happened was a guy came walking out of dead ground on the road we were on, walking towards us, and straight away he looked really really suss He's actually carrying like this box looked like a cardboard.

Box, maybe twice the size of a shoe box.

And he's walking right towards us, and we're sitting there quietly watching him, and then he sort of gets to sort of about that forty or fifty meters away and he looks up, and it was amusing in the fact that he was so surprised to see us. He sort of put the box on the ground and looked to me like he was pretending to do his shoes up. But that was weird because they don't wear lasers and

Don't remember the bang.

Your senses are all shutting down, but I didn't go unconscious at any point, and I can still like really imprinted on my mind the moment of the Everything was great. And then the next thing I can remember is I was looking back at and I could see the vehicle and because we didn't have roofs on our LRPV, so I'd been ejected out and thrown and I think I was still airborne, and our cars were fully loaded with

From the car. I went to get up and I couldn't fill my legs.

My first thought, and lots of people probably have had it in the been in the same situation, is I need a gun.

I need my gun to defend myself.

And I look back at the LRPV, which was now sort of resting on the road, all the fuels emptying out of it down the hill towards me. It's a bit of a mess. But my M four was sort of on the ground near the car. I could see it, but I couldn't get up to get it. And it was kind of at that point I remember my teammates from the vehicle behind running past.

They were putting out security.

On the hills and made it come and got me and the driver and I were flown out back to TK first, but then down to Canahart. I made a pretty good recovery after it.

All.

The doctors, the American doctors in Canadheart told me that it's just the shockwave passing through your body causes a lot of swelling yeah, and it's that swelling that was restricting sort of movement a lot. And so yeah, thirty six hours later I was hobbling out of the hospital on crutches. I suppose to start the rehab. But it

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty incredible that you got ballown out of the vehicle like that, but we're more or less okay. I mean I wouldn't obviously not uninjured, but I mean when you've described it as like it sounds like you lost your legs or something, I mean.

Yeah, now I'm pretty good now. I mean I've still got a few injuries. I've got a few injuries that have troubled me since.

Like disks and stuff and the vertebrae.

Dodgy dodgy back and knees. I have joint trouble with my joints, so I think, and more than a fifty year old should. And I think it's probably from that shop big shockwave. You know, it's just degrading your body faster than it should be. But yeah, it was it. Yeah, it was probably that ID. It was pretty big. Could have been the years of m as well, could have been could have been all the Barrett fifty cow FID who knows.

So rehab, I mean you're still a part of the essays going through this rehab process.

Yeah.

They flew me back to Australia. I think I had maybe two months of full sick stay home and rest up.

I mean up.

My body was purple, which was I had no shrapnel injuries, which was great, but my body was purple.

Just from that I all the way around.

Oh no, it was more internal bleeding was superficial. Yeah, it was just bruising and you know once that went down, I mean I laid it on the couch for two weeks, I couldn't do anything. But I just literally went home. So I didn't go back to the unit at all much. It was maybe about two months. I then reported back to the docks. They took more m morphine tablets off me and I hit the gym and the pool and went to the pool, went to the phisier, told everyone I was good.

To go and.

Redeployed back to Afghanistan. I think about four months later, four or five months later. I mean, to be honest, I wasn't good to go, but you know, I wanted to get back into fight and go back and help my mates out. My squadron was going back the next year, and the next year. I didn't do a kinetic war fighting deployment. I did a deployment that was a lot more orientated around intelligence and reconnaissance work and stuff like that.

Yeah, no, that's pretty cool that they helped you facilitate that. Tell us.

Let's get into like it sounds like maybe the final deployments you had in Afghanistan it was more doing high value target strikes.

Yeah. Yeah, and hugely different too.

I mean from two thousand and two driving rounding cars with not much action two thousand and seven lots of action driving rounding cars. It evolved a lot while I wasn't there. The Americans basically said, hey, we'll put on helos for you to really target the enemy leadership, which was what we did. A lot more of the rules it crept in as well, you know, you couldn't do night operations or you needed super high level approvals to

We had a few.

Full sas teams there, which was hugely important. But with the high partnering ratio, we had a couple of different partnering forces that we would work with depending on what locations the target was in, and it was my job on that trip to mentor the partnering forces. As it turned out, I.

Spent the majority of my trip.

Working with one as much as I could, But yeah, didn't stay in the field overnight.

I don't think we would have the heroes on. We would launch, you.

Know, develop in the morning respectable times, jump out about at Revaley at six o'clock and grab a feed and take it to the ops room and start watching the feeds and see what targets are in the area and.

Maybe there was one that was hot.

You might launch at eight seven or eight in the morning, or maybe you might watch one for a while and launch about ten, get to a shootout, catch a bad guy, and generally be home by four or five.

So it was very respectable.

What was the partner for us that you worked with most of the time.

The one that I liked working with with the NDS guys from from up north.

Yeah, they were.

I found the ones that I worked with were hugely courageous, they were pretty well disciplined, and they were hugely open to train as well. So we could do a lot of you know, compound clearance rehearsals, and we had a training facility within the wire at t K near the range, and so we could go out there and rehearse and train and.

They were good.

They were great to work with, to the point where I go with them by myself.

I mean it's it's really weird.

To get into a shootout with guys you can't talk to, because the terms that we that I used were literally civilian contractors, and so they'd come on the hits with us, but they wouldn't be keen to be up the front with me. But I'd be up the front with with the guys a lot of them. A lot of the target buildings we'd send the teams in two two sort

But I suppose we found or I found even.

Just with the Afghans that I was working with, especially the ones that I trusted that i'd go by myself with, they'd be that'd be always if there's a h VT there, there's always security them and they're never in the same building. They're always out and around in those other buildings or creek lines or or.

Something like that. So a lot of the shootouts skirmishes that we had were.

Around those target buildings, whereas the actual teams of operators that were clearing those we got into the bulk of the combat.

Are there any particular operations from that last deployment that kind of stand out for you.

I had an interesting little day.

I wrote a short book, and I had an interesting little day.

One in particular where.

We landed and there was a bit of random, sporadic shooting from sort of the center of the assault force moving into the target area.

I didn't think much of it. It was literally a couple of rounds.

But then after we cleared our sort of non priority area, one of my afghans come and grabbed me, Mark, Mark, come with me, which I was happy to do.

I mean, I trusted the guy. He was a good little operator.

But he then dragged me a long way away from the troop to the point where I was sort of starting to get nervous. Mate, we need to cut this here and head back. We're getting too far away. And then all of a sudden I arrived at the compound. And I would normally operate with about ten ten guys, got to that compound and there was a couple of other guys standing out the front and they're like, go in,

He was actually still bleeding out, and.

I actually reckon it was probably an ak that he'd been hit by, because there was a massive hole in his leg, but who knows.

Could have been a ricochet, could have been anything.

I patched him up and got the medic over, sort of thinking to myself, this is like a bit of a big day already, and it's not even a big day.

We then got into another.

Small shootout again just after that, where we lost Facts, one of our TAC dogs, the handler, and the handlers offside, I had to assault a creek line and Facts got killed as well.

So that one stood out to me as well.

I mean, some guys talk about post traumatic traumatic stress a lot, and.

I've shared that story a bit.

I mean, I don't think I suffer hugely from PTSD, but I actually had a reoccurring dream after that job that when I went into that room it was my son that had been hit. They were about the same They are about the same age. I mean, I don't know, it's that warfare. It says you have some big days that you take a while to get over.

That one took me a while to get over.

Yeah, understandable.

So let's start to talk a little bit about sort of your exit from the Australian military. You continued working for the Australian government for a while, but was this just your natural retirement point at what was kind of the auspices under which you got out.

Yeah, I'm really odd in this respect, even amongst sas guys, I'm a bit of a bit of a rarity. So I actually discharged from the regular Army in two thousand and nine after I did that one deployment, after I got blown up, and I was sort of in that mid two thousand and nine, I was going, I'm not really healing up real quick. My back's still dodgy. I might get out and do something else. Maybe my time's up.

So they just kept me in their pool of reserve guys.

And I went to the Australian Embassy in Kabul and worked as a security contractor at the embassy, which.

Had a hugely interesting eighteen months.

I loved it, the difference from military to contracting in the fact that you now have got You've no longer got this rule book to keep you safe. You can make as many bad decisions as you like as a civilian contractor, and you're the person that's going to suffer

Safe while they do it.

So I definitely enjoyed that to begin with, but it was sort of that twenty eleven twelve thirteen period, our small little less as unit was sort of starting to run dry. I've got mates that, by that time frame had done ten. You know, eight deployments was not uncommon. Ten deployments was still quite common. So and I all my best mates were still over there. I was still going back every now and then to help with training. And one day someone said, oh, what are you doing

The bulk of my work was.

Back at the embassy, driving the ambassador around town and doing that diplomatic protection, a few odd trips around Afghanistan, but mostly in Cabul.

And it wasn't until sort of.

That twenty sixteen period we're in my head I kind of went, I'm okay with my.

Life experienced in the military to.

This point, I'm gonna get out and I kind of did a few reserve training things in Australia after that, but sort of by two thousand and sixteen, seventeen eighteen onwards, I was like, fully out. I don't think i've I'm fully discharged now. I'm not even in the Army reserve anymore, and I haven't really done anything since twenty eighteen or anything.

I mean, how many years total in the Australian military from where it was the lad Eddies when you first went in, right.

Yeah, not quite twenty a bit under twenty. Yeah, not a bad hit out they No.

Hell no, it's a great run that you had, and I mean you're I'm glad that you weren't injured worse than you were considering what you went through.

I mean, it's a lot.

I want to talk about the things you're doing today as an expedition and adventure travel guile. But one of the things we had talked about earlier that I want to make sure we touch upon and ask you about is that the SAS has kind of had a pretty

Yep, Yeah, Marus is still in the.

Coats and so this is still kind of like unfolding in the public sphere in Australia, and I just wanted to ask you, you know, if you have any comments about it or thoughts about it that you wanted to share with people.

Yeah, not heaps.

It is certainly still heavy in the press in Australia. It's not resolved, which is a huge shame in itself.

I think.

Myself and all my colleagues that I've ever spoken with, none of us were against an inquiry, and not even that you don't even need to call it an inquiry, a post operation review on what.

Do we do well? Obviously, what could we have done better?

How could we improve how can we make tomorrow's war fighter better than we were all hugely in believing of that. I was bitterly disappointed, I suppose to say, mildly how they conducted the review, how they did the investigation. There was a massive trial by media. The money that's been spent trying to find people guilty by our own country.

Prove their narrative to sell their story.

There was the one defamation case with the commander was a Russell Heston that I think he won his lawsuit.

Yeah, and good because hopefully in the future that'll make them do a bit more due diligence before they start publishing their news articles. Yeah, I'm all for the public being informed to an extent. I think, in hindsight, we should have shared a lot more of the good work we did in Afghanistan. Our s O TG especially just had this blanket no media, no stories policy, and what then inevitably resulted was the only stories that ever came.

Out were bad ones, bad ones. And so we're at this point now where there's.

No no one knows about the amazing work we did for twenty years, the fact that all the Afghan lives we saved. To be honest, you don't have to look too deep on the internet to find all the suicide bombings that I witnessed in Cabul. I mean in that twenty and nine to ten period, the guest I lived in Cabul City and that guest house behind us that got hit there was the UN guesthouse, and I think an nex Navy seal and another UN contractor that was

Were there trying to prevent.

Tell us about this.

It's hard to see the.

Finish this documentary you mentioned to me, Bravery and Betrayal that just came out.

Yeah, and I'm hugely supportive of it. So I've seen.

It and it's, in my opinion, it's not a huge rebuttal of.

The war crime stuff.

That's one of the reasons I like it so much is that it's actually some SAS guys going, hey, you know what, I'm just going to tell some of my story. That's good, and so they're getting interviewed and just sharing their experiences, pretty much like you've given me the opportunity to do today. But to put it puts war fighting in a little bit of context, I think, in the fact that Bravery and Betrayal is not only interviewing a few x SAS guys, it also is interviewing a few

These kill capture missions.

I think there's about three of the minute, which is terrific to get someone else's perspective again.

And it actually also interviews a few of.

The widows who I know personally, and it must have been really difficult for them to get on camera and to be interviewed.

And talk about Matt Locke and Blaine didams, but.

They did, which I think puts a lot of what we were doing and what we believed in so much into a bit more perspective than just the negative news articles that have.

Been out there.

The betrayal part that's in the name, obviously, I think really focuses on the one hugely disappointing incident was at the end of that Brereton Report where the Australian military felt the need to apologize to the Afghan people and I personally, my personal belief is that that was just insulting to us and everything we sacrifice for over that

Yeah, we can put some links in the description of this podcast and people can check it out.

Yeah, I'd love to send you those, but yeah, I hope that gets out there a few bit.

And I've spoken to the producers as well.

They're hoping that in the future they can do the same thing, make a similar docade for the commandos, make a similar doco for some of the infantry battalions that did deployments to afghan and share some more of that broader Australian military story. Because it's apart from people's pot that have done podcasts, and there's a few podcasts in Australia.

Apart from people that have.

Gone out of their way to share their own stories and a book are on a podcast, there's really not much covered yet in Australia those personal experiences.

I think it sort of speaks to the double edged sort of secrecy.

Right.

In one hand, the military secrecy around these missions is paramount in one sense, but after it happens, if you know, as we talked about, if you don't publicize it in some way, if you don't allow your soldiers to be interviewed by the press, then what leaks out is going to be the negative stuff, you know, the guys were rightly or wrongly disgruntled and angry about what they experienced, and you're not going to kind of get the other side.

As I said, everyone I've worked with and Seul and the vast majority as within my team, and the vast majority, if not everyone, I don't know, But yeah, so much good was done and so much hard work and sacrifice by good people. So it is, as you say, a hugely difficult situation, one I don't have the answers for. But as you just said, if you look today in the Ukraine or Israel, to think that more and more information from a battlespace is not going to be shared,

A little bit naive, I think.

A little bit of out of touch with the times.

Absolutely, So we need our military, Australian military. I'm sure they're doing it today. They need to get smarter at that in exactly that, what do we share and what don't we.

Yeah, so talk to us a little bit about your post service career and what you've gotten in two cents.

Then it sounds like it's a lot of fun.

Actually, yeah, I'm pretty fortunate today. I'm living the dream.

I mean, after I finished up working at the Australian Embassy in Kabul, I didn't really know what I didn't know what I was going to do when I got to a military That's why I ended up contracting and finishing the contracting.

I didn't really finish it.

I just sort of thought I'd move into something a bit more fun and interesting.

How can I love to travel?

I love visiting foreign cultures and doing weird and wonderful things. How can I keep doing that but get shot at less? And I suppose I was. I thought, well, I can do expedition sort of sort of guiding. While I was at the embassy, I started a small hiking business in Tazzy and it was literally just to fill in my rotations, off take people hiking in the mountains and out into the remote wilderness. But then that kind of led to

And that led me to.

Places like Cambodia, it in remote areas of Indonesia, went to Africa and started doing these sort of cool, pretty cool trips that I really enjoyed. At the same time, I was like, how can I keep doing this but actually not really have a job to do, And I sort of off the back of my hiking up mountains in TAZZI came to that sort of tourism piece, well, if someone wants to go and see this place, I'll take.

Them and keep them safe. And I still love my motorbike riding.

So that led me and another excess a mate to do a motor bike ride through Mongolia, which was pretty epic, about three thy five hundred k's or something around the country. I did a hike through Israel back in twenty nineteen, I think the national trail there, the Israel National Trail, so walk from north to south that was pretty epic, and then just did some motobike rides in Vietnam and

I suppose. I've got a veteran whiskey brand called dog Tag Whiskey.

So it's not a big business, but we sell a few few bottles. And it's Tasmania, where I live, where I came from, is becoming more and more well known for phenomenal whiskey. They produce some really really high quality whiskey. Is that because the climate is somewhat similar to Scotland. They say, I'm not a stiller, but they say the climate is perfect and we have everything in Tasmania to make the white spirit, the new make spirit.

So we do import our barrels, both from the.

US sort as Ireland. I mean everyone I think does yes, So.

It's either from America or or Europe. I've got some French ape barrels, but mostly American. Eight got some old in America your whiskey. I think they can only use the barrels once or something. There's some wall there. That's just why we get a lot of American barrels here.

That might be bourbon.

Okay, yeah, we put out I've got whiskey and bourbon barrels.

I've got some Buffalo trace barrels and yeah makes good whiskey.

And what's your You mentioned you have a book out What's.

The Point that's called And it's not an autobiography. It's really just myself write it.

My wife edited it, went to the printers down the road and printed my own copy.

So I just sell them on my own website. I can assist.

And it's just I write because I kept traveling through COVID, but we had our mad lockdowns in Australia. So every time I'd return from overseas back to Australia half a dozen times times during COVID, I'd get locked in a hotel in Sydney for a few weeks, and so I started just writing some of my stories while I was locked in.

The hotel rooms.

And then that eventually my wife said, what are you going to do with these mad stories You've written about Afghanistan and adventure travel and stuff, and I was to begin with, I was like, I don't know.

We're SF guys, we don't write books.

But I think over time, I was like, well, there's nothing wrong with sharing some of these stories. You know I talked about getting blown up, which I share on podcasts and things like that.

So eventually, yeah, I just thought I'll share it.

But I haven't got time to sit down and write about my life, so I've just it's a bit of a here's a few experiences that I've had in life, and here's what I learned from them.

So I always like to have the positive outcome.

What I got out of it, which I lit a bit of keynote speaking and that's my main topic.

Really, what do we learn from from.

These experiences that we might consider the experience, you know, positive or negative. It might be a really crappy experience, But did we get anything out of it? How did we improve as a person? Are we more adaptive? Are we more resilient? Are we more are we better leader? Will we make the same mistake again? And you can pick those lessons up from lots of different places, whether it's you know, business or adventure or or your time in the military.

Where can people find you? What's your website?

Mark Doreene is the best place to find me online?

I'm on I'm.

Tinkering and playing with all social media expert if you're in America. But I'm on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and I've got a Markedine website. But Point Assist is my business that I work through and that also has its own website.

And they can buy your book through through your website.

Yeah, shipped, not many of ship maybe a dozen or two to a couple of dozen to the US, which I'm always like.

I hope it gets it. Yeah, yeah, family, just randomly I've ordered.

Things from Australia before.

It gets interesting, not not as interesting as when you order things from South Africa, but uh, Australia is Yeah, you never know where it's gonna or when it's going to show up.

Yeah, I'm not sure even legally if I can. I don't think I can even legally send my alcohol to America.

Probably not, probably not.

But the book, the book, Yeah, i'd love to send you a copy.

I'll send you a copy of.

I would love that. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, especially the booze is going to get tariff now too, so you're you're screwed. Yeah, but I would love to try that, Mark, I mean, thanks for joining us on the show.

Really appreciate it.

We'll have for listeners or viewers, will have links down the description for people who are interested in checking out these websites or buying the book.

Some questions. We've got a couple. We've got a couple of viewer questions for you, Mark.

Oh yeah, shoot, from Matt being a big fan of Ossie pop culture, from Dundee to mister in between, can you tell us about some real life AUSSI heroes you've served with.

Good question.

Oh yeah, that's a pretty hard question actually off the cup well, the bravery in betrayal. I suppose is is one dimension again, there's a bloke in that called more and and to be brutally honest, when I first heard that the guys were making a doco, I was a little bit, oh, what's going to be in this? But it was Mortz and another another x rs M of the regiment, actually Wayne Weeks, that were a big part

He did selection for me.

But when I got to the sas, he was in the squadron that I was in two squadron, and it's one of those guys that was an excellent soldiers, hugely professional, always trying to improve, and I think so I modeled a lot of my thought process off that continuous self improvement.

How can I learn more? How can I get better at what I do?

I think I got that off more when my patrol command I heard his back and got taken out of the field and I got promoted a couple of.

Weeks before I blew himself up.

Mortz was the sixth guy to come back into my filling in my patrol, which I at the time thought was hugely difficult because I've got this guy that should be my patrol commander. He's just going to fill in for a few weeks as Taylor and Charlie. But yeah, someone I hugely look up to and for probably that reason, is usually professional. He's an excellent soldier and had that mindset of always improving.

How can we get better at what we do? Yeah, Crocodile Dundee, I.

Think it is back out at the moment, and Senators in Australia, he's making a comeback, the big guy.

We have a couple more. Did you deploy for the Pong Su or Tampa operations?

No, they weren't my squadron, all right, we got one more interesting jobs are at the time, and I think that we were we became at that time. We really were the force of choice in the fact that we were the cheapest to send anywhere and the most likely to get positive results, whatever that might be, whether it was supporting America somewhere or or catching a drug boat or some illegal fishermen or whatever it might be. Maybe a few lessons there that there's jobs that we did

No, I wasn't on those ones.

Uh.

The what was the weirdest thing you saw in Afghanistan?

The weirdest.

Not my go to guys that I used to Afghansas I used to like to partner with, but partnering with the other blokes I had a few other different local police forces and things like that, and there was always weird stuff happening there. You'd be arresting someone who's clearly a JPELD high level target and they're trying to talk out of it, like there was.

So that was weird. Without going into any stories that are too crazy.

Last one, did you ever work with Jayshak in Afghanistan or Iraq?

No?

I didn't.

What I did do and what I loved was the Americans that used to come to the essays on exchange. So we did get a couple of green bereys come over on the occasion, and I worked with a couple of Navy seals over time. Ken, I'm trying to think of his last name. Actually, you've caught me off guard. Was I worked with He came on that two thousand and seven deployment with US. I wish I could remember his last name. And he actually got killed on a separate deployment in Iraq later on.

A great guy. Yeah, and he was super staked when he got to Australia.

He'd love to come out and have to be with us. We drag him out because a pretty senior guy in.

The in the US in the Unity was from.

Well Mark, thank you for this interview and sharing your perspectives and experiences with us. Again, love works down the description for you, for folks out there who want to go check out the website, check out the book, check out maybe one of these crazy adventure trips that he's going on. And for everyone else out there. Any final thoughts before we roll out tonight.

Mark, Oh, my only final thought is thanks for what you do helping blacks share their stories. It's it's I think it's hugely important, especially when someone's done a lot in their life, and it hasn't always been easy. It's good to be out, to be able to share.

It's not only good for the.

Person, but it's actually good for the community. You'm a big believer of that.

I think so too.

Be mature as a nation when we can share some of these stories and talk a ban the realisms of life.

Yeah, absolutely so, thank you. We could do it without you. Mark, thank you and everyone else. Will see you next week. Actually no, there will be two episodes this week, so we'll see you on Wednesday and then on Friday.

Two for the price of one.

Good work, all.

Right, take care of everyone.

Jeez.

Hey guys, it's Jack.

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