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*** [? Tunbridge. ?]
Joined the Navy as an electronics technician.
Prior to the Navy, I was working as an outdoor
education instructor, and thought the navy would be a
fantastic career choice, due to the fact that the whole
adventure side of things.
Still getting out there on the ships and being active, and
yes, I thought the navy's exciting.
I'm *** ET Jared Reeves.
I joined the Navy February last year.
I'm 20 years old.
I joined up as an ET--
electronics technician.
I had a bit of a mechanical background in the family, and
didn't really like the way that was going, so I thought
I'd try something a bit different.
And yes, I joined up the Navy, and loved it ever since.
The training we've done so far is just preparing us to be
ready for working on sonar, radars on the ships.
It can be different things, just to maintaining them to if
they do break, then we've got to work out how to fix them,
and basically just using schematics and working out
what part has failed, and what we have to do to fix it.
Basically, it's just a sort of strategise and then attack
sort of thing.
Yeah.
The way they have taught us has been step by step.
The process has allowed me to learn as I go along, and if
I've had any troubles, I've just asked for help, got
tutorials, and so yeah, there's been no real issues.
I found where we are at the minute in the [INAUDIBLE], I
found it pretty easy, because I've grown up with
computers and that.
And my brother's really into computers.
So I basically jumped straight into this.
I did physics and that at school, so I was always into
the more hands on sort of stuff.
A lot of the instructors have worked for 10, 20 years out at
sea, so it's great when yo need to get one of them as an
instructor, because then you can ask them questions about
what life is like at sea, and what our role would be like as
electronic technicians.
Because when we've actually got the Navy instructors, they
can relate, like while we've been doing Navy specifics,
what we're doing and that, they can relate to work that
we will be doing on a ship, or experiences that they've had
working on that with a ship.
I'm from Victoria, so I love being at service.
It's close to home.
All the trainees are here.
That's pretty much mostly people your own age-- you
know, you'll get usually from 18 to 30 year
olds, 33 year olds.
[LAUGHS]
What are you getting at?
And yeah, it's great, always being around your mates and
being able to just relax after work and that.
You've always got sport to play, or I play music, and I'm
with another couple of boys.
We've made a bit of a band, and been able to do all our
own stuff that we would do on the outside in here.
So it's basically like living at uni sort of thing, in a
dormitory sort of setup.
There's just so many experiences that you can do
through it, like that just don't necessarily have to be
Navy related.
Just sports or music, and anything like that.
It's wicked.
I love that my whole day is chockers.
Like, I love that it's full.
Makes the day go quickly.
You really feel like you've achieved something at the end
of the day.
Every day, you think, I learned this, I learned that.
It's exciting.
Well, I get off about 5:30 every day, get ready, and go
have some breakfast.
And then we form up at 6:30, we get our classes marked off,
and then we march down to the engineering faculty.
We start class at 7:00, have a stand easy at 10:00--
it's just a half an hour break.
Just grab a brew, grab a bit of food, and
then work until 1:00.
And then when 1:00 comes around, go have some lunch,
and then yeah, we finish at 1:00 on a Friday, and you're
free to do what you want for the weekend.
I can't wait to get over to our Sterling over in Perth--
HMS Sterling.
Apparently, just the base is just so relaxed.
It's a really good environment, and we'll
actually be doing stuff that's directly related to our job.
Like, if a ship comes in, then we'll be able to go and have a
look at it, see if they need any work done or anything.
Hopefully get posted to a ship, be able to go do some
travel, be able to finally see all the stuff we'll actually
be working on.
It's going to be awesome.