Defence Force Families

Strawberry Fields, don't take it to heart. I've only found 4 army wives that I really get on with in the 7 years DH has been in the army. Others I'm nice to when I see them, but they're not women I hang out with. However my problem is that I live no-where near these women. 1 lives in Brisbane, 1 in Darwin (she is moving to Melbourne soon YAYAYA!!! :dance: and the other 2 I've only gotten to know in the last 6 months of 2010 and they're both in Sydney! It can suck at times, but I really hope you find some new friends soon. I found it really difficult when we moved to Wodonga. I wasn't working, I didn't know anybody and I wasn't really meeting anyone either. After about 3 months we started to hang out with 3 other couples more and more and now 2 of the wives are 2 of my best friends. It sometimes can take time to find the right wives that you really click with. I really hope it happens soon for you :hug:

Thanks Tara, I'm not working yet either I'm having a really hard time finding a job and for some reason I dont qualify for help from defence to find one :( So I'm not meeting people either. One of the boys DH is friends with and his gf are really nice but they're from Townsville so they already have a life here so we don't see them as much as I'd like. Plus she's really shy and I think she's a little scared of me and my giantic mouth hahaha I've never had trouble making friends before so I think thats why its hitting me so hard! I'm sure it will work out though, eventually! :)

omg I know what you mean when you talk about the wives! After a really bad experience when we first moved to newcastle I just would NOT bother with any of them... then i had my little boy and went to playgroup (i was so scared of what i'd heard) and the craft group and they were all super lovely. I was really proved wrong.

Ever since that one bad experience i really haven't met anyone who wasn't lovely. Which is strange cos i'd heard all about the bbeeatches.

But i think: 'ah well, I don't want to be your friend if you are such a cow!'

Not sure why some women think they can look down their nose at you cos their husband holds a certain work position??? not like he's socially or morally a better person or whatever. It's just a strange attitude to have and very old fashioned. But i'm a big mouth so if someone was like that to me know, she'd be getting a good ole what for. I ain't shy about confronting someone when i think they are being rude to me lol. My poor DH cringes hahahah.

:) So no one else up in Darwin on here??

Grub: what makes me laugh about the wives who are pretentious because of their husbands rank is that it has nothin to do with them!! Haha.. They arent the sargeant or WO, their husbands are!! They think they are awesome when really it has nothing to do with them!!

Strawberryfields: I just remembered I have a friend who just got posted to townsville with her hubby, they have 2 kids (2-3yo and a 1ish yo) and she is like 22-23yo... I'll ask her if I can pass on her details to you? She is lovely, loud and fun!

MrsBexie that would be great!

I think it might go the other way as well, my sil found that some wives wouldn't have much to do with her because my brother is a wing commander, their hubbies said it was not to good to get too close.

Kitten - My DH doesn't want to get too close to his CO or any officers either, something about never really being able to relax around them. I don't understand why they just can't leave work at work...I mean I used to go out and get smashed with my boss at my old job! Once we clocked off we were just friends, I don't know why the defence force people cant be like that...

I've been with DH for nearly 11 years of the 12 he's been in and I have never experienced first hand a wife being a biatch cause of her husbands rank. It may happen but never to me and it wouldn't/doesn't matter to me what rank husbands are.
When DH was deployed as a lance jack one of my closet friends was the XO's wife.

It is hard for the guys to be friends with higher/lower ranks within their own units or direct teams. I wouldn't be besties with my boss... Im not saying they can't be friendly or a bit social. Saying that tho DH is pretty good at it lol, he seems to balance it. But he is an NCO it's quite different for Officers.

It comes down to what they actually do it's the ADF, war is what most of them train for...if you are sending someone into battle you need to know if you tell someone to go over that trench, so to speak, they will do it and on the flip side they need to be able to tell someone to do it, not hold back.

Grub, I lived in Darwin for years, but that was a long time ago. :)

I have a really dear friend who was an army wife who I worked with for a couple years, still stay in touch all these years later, but since then we have rarely been close enough to base to really be socialising a lot with defence people. In DH's last posting I really needed some help and support from that direction but the social things were always on days when I was working, and there was *no* deployment support until I provided very specific feedback and DCO (which had been critically understaffed) got a new social worker, they finally set up functions every few months (that was Canberra, for any of you ladies there) just before we left. FWIW I think our little family unit breaks probably every single stereotype there is about defence families.

The whole rank structure is a farce anyway. In some musterings you get promoted every few years just by doing the right courses, in other musterings you basically have to wait for someone to die (cos they ain't retiring) and then you're only promoted by merit. Highly unfair when you're excluded from the retention bonuses due to the system's mismanagement of career progression. Plus they have complete ****s in management positions while excellent staff with excellent leadership skills don't hang around that long because they can't justify the sort of decisions that are routinely made.

oh tell me about not falling into the cookie cutter category for the dco sort of events/social things. when we moved to newcastle I got a job a couple of months later then DH got sent away for a few weeks so I was alone in a new place, literally thousands of kms from family and friends. I'd go to work ,where i knew no one cos i was new, and come home and that was it! we didn't even have our pets then, it was so lonely. I'd find I would be chatting to check out chicks like they were my besties! lol.

I find that all the community service type things organised for defence are for married with childrens - and for the couple with no kids, you don't fit in... even worse if you work as all the functions are during the day.

it's a fine line tho, cos they don't want to be working weekends etc and the udnerstaffing makes the actual workers on the ground jobs really difficult. Mind you we didn't get our welcome pack fo 3 yeras!!! lol but I blame DH for that!

yeah marydean - my DH's mustering seems pretty good. Looks like he's going to get promoted soon :) But he's been given a rare opportunity to do something really different in introducing a new computer management program (which is sort of outside his trade, strictly speaking but they saw potential) and is super good at that sort of thing (not biased, he really is!). So he's really had great opportunties in the last few years but he did say that some of the trades are terrible for not being able to move up. Did you like darwin??

ezymay - we live next door to dh's boss and his wife! lol. so there's a car pool system going on hahah. But i'm not overly friendly with the wife (we have just moved here so maybe later) but she's in her 40s with grown children so we're in a different head space.

My biggest hassel here atm is maternal care. Having number 2 in JUne and with only 3 private obstetricians available, I couldn't get a spot with 2 of them and the one who did have a place for me is so hideously expensive he's the reason why the govt cut back on the obst rebate through medicare! he wants to charge about $5000 for ME to push MY baby out and for him to turn up and 'direct'! HA! we can't afford it, the other obst up here charge a reasonable $2000 and are excellent apparently but you've got to book in as soon as you've dtd... unfortunately we had to do Frozen EMbryo Transfer so had to wait for the viability scan at 7 weeks to confirm it all... bbrrrhh. SO I'm having to go public... not very happy about it as heard some real horror stories but am hopeful i'll get into the birth centre.

geez that's the worst bit about moving... finding new docs etc. hate it!

oh dear, blathered on .... again :) ox

Hi ladies! :) I just found this thread (at least, I think I just found it. hehe - who knows if I posted at some stage over the last few months).
DH and I are based in Townsville, and i was born and bred here (so it's well and truly home!). DH is in 1RAR. :)
Strawberry fields - I'll pm you soon - maybe we could catch up for coffee tomorrow? It'll be me and DD (who's 20 months old), so somewhere kid friendly would be good. But I can give you the run down about the obs and the private hospital etc.
Will be exciting if you other girls (Freya and MrsBexie) get posted up here too - then we could have a regular BB meetup! :)

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Wowee, is it really true you're in Adelaide :cheer:! Are you coming to the get together next weekend???

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Yep and Yep.

Beatitude - whereabouts are you? Im originally from the southern burbs, but our new place is in Blakeview, so now I'm learning the north

ETA: Strawberry Fields, I have just moved out of Townsville. There was 1 group of women that were very cliquey, but most of the girls I met were lovely. Head to Geckos for friday playgroup, There is a BB member as one of the co-ordinators and she is lovely.

Alioops: We are down in morphett vale. How is the north treating you so far? Iv been through there a few times. Some really nice pockets. Nice and close to the barossa too. Yummy, barossa wine! I don't think I could live out north. Too far from the beach for me!

I grew up in Reynella!! How's that for close!! Yeah North is better than I thought it would be, closer to family and there are a few BBers around me.

DH is on stand down for another week because the army stuff at edinburgh was not finished. Qies had no stationary, metalsmiths no welding wire (he is the only metalsmith on Edinburgh) so an extra 2 weeks leave has been nice. I am about ready for him to start work though, he is driving me nuts.

Lol. Dh went back to work today after 5 weeks off so I hear you about being ready for him to go back. It's nice having them home though. We lived in reynella before we moved here. Just near south gate plaza there. Loved it there. We like living here coz we are nice and close to family. Out north we would be very isolated.

There has been so much work going on at edinborough. Dh was always going on about the road closures etc. You would think that they would have everything ready before they moved the army in but that would just be common sense lol.

alioops - you must live near us! we are in the same suburb!

Absolutely Teresa!! We are in Regent Grove estate. Our place was vacant for 18 months so there is a bit that they are getting fixed, because they couldn't test it without power or phone connection. we are the 1st DHA tenants in a house that they bought. Half the bark is missing so I hope they dont TC it. I need to prune back the lavendar bush though, because it covers the water metre.

Beatitude, I lived behind the house across the road from Sunrise Christian School. We still go down south regularly because DH's family are all south, mine are north and west now. but we are closer that 3000km now which is good.

Hello ladies! :)
Seems this thread went silent for a while - and I just wanted to drop in and say hi!

Are any of your partners with 3RAR in Sydney? I was down from Townsville last week to attend some briefings about Townsville, and not sure if anyone from BB would have been there.

I can't remember, but are there many ladies in here in Townsville? (I know Strawberry Fields is).

Hope everyone is going well! :)

Deleted due to double post. :)

Hi everyone. My DH is in the Army at 2Cdo Reg in Sydney. We havent lived anywhere else because he doesn't get posted. There seem to be a lot of Defence wives on BB! :hello:

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Hi everyone. My DH is in the Army at 2Cdo Reg in Sydney. We havent lived anywhere else because he doesn't get posted. There seem to be a lot of Defence wives on BB! :hello:

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Are you living in the Grove?

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Mine too Soph! Are you living in the Grove?

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Nope, in V Point up the road from the Base.

Oh ok, close enough lol

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Oh ok, close enough lol

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Yeah pretty much the same difference, lol.

I used to live in v point too. Torch street :)

( not a defense force family) btw just dropping by.....

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I used to live in v point too. Torch street :)

( not a defense force family) btw just dropping by.....

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Small world!! I love living here, its so peaceful and my neighbours are excellent :)

My DH is at 2CDO aswell!

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My DH is at 2CDO aswell!

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:rofl: Oh thats got to be the craziest coincidence Ive seen on here.

I want to know how you two have so many kids! My DH is never home to concieve any! lol

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I want to know how you two have so many kids! My DH is never home to concieve any! lol

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Although TBH I miss him going away alot :hide:

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Ah my hubby isnt actually a commando lol so he isnt away as much as the rest. He used to be when we first married but then he got sick of being away all the time. Now he has the best of both worlds - working with infantry units but in tech support.

Although TBH I miss him going away alot :hide:

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Oh that would explain it! Hahaha people ask me all the time how I cope with my DH away and the truth is that I actually enjoy the time alone for the most part! Its hard having a 3yo who doesnt understand where Daddy is and dealing with all the tantrums that go along with it but I enjoy my freedom and just not having to deal with him. That sounds really bad! lol But with fertility issues and him never being here its virtually impossible to concieve #2. So we're looking into IVF in the next 6 months :)

lol DH isn't a commando either - he's a Q-e(sp?) , he goes away a bit as he supplies everything for them, but where he is atm, it's only a few days at a time. I'm loving that! He was in Artillery for 8yrs and was away all the time.

How I have so many children ......My middle 2 are twins Soph, and number 4 was an amazing surprise for us.

(story of number 4) :p ..... I think she was a gift from my Mum who passed away 2 months before A was conceived. We had trouble and it took a long time conceiving our first two pregnancies,my Mum kept saying, come on one more little girl , as that would make grand child #10 and even up the boy/girl ratio a little. DH was adamant we were not having any more. A week before Mum passed, I had my cards read and she said be careful in Oct/Nov if we didn't want another child. I forgot about it, Mum passed away Aug 31 09, we didn't use contraception one time (Oct 24th - yes I know exactly lol) and a week later I knew I was pregnant. She's a special little baby to us.

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(story of number 4) :p ..... I think she was a gift from my Mum who passed away 2 months before A was conceived. We had trouble and it took a long time conceiving our first two pregnancies,my Mum kept saying, come on one more little girl , as that would make grand child #10 and even up the boy/girl ratio a little. DH was adamant we were not having any more. A week before Mum passed, I had my cards read and she said be careful in Oct/Nov if we didn't want another child. I forgot about it, Mum passed away Aug 31 09, we didn't use contraception one time (Oct 24th - yes I know exactly lol) and a week later I knew I was pregnant. She's a special little baby to us.

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What a lovely present from your mum! Your little angel was just meant to be :) Its quite possible our Dh's might know each other.

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What a lovely present from your mum! Your little angel was just meant to be :) Its quite possible our Dh's might know each other.

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Lol you guys do know each other ;)

Owens: That is a nice surprise! Our DD was a newlywed surprise when we werent trying and didnt know I had 'issues'. Who read your cards for you? Id love to know whats in store for me baby wise! My DH Is off overseas again mid this year so we dont have a very good chance this year with all the pre-deployment training etc to concieve. Oh well, IVF here we come!

owens5 - what a beautiful gift from your mum! i bet that really surprised you when you found out :D

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What a lovely present from your mum! Your little angel was just meant to be :) Its quite possible our Dh's might know each other.

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I know who you are! And my DH just said he thinks your DH is working up with them atm! lol

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Owens: That is a nice surprise! Our DD was a newlywed surprise when we werent trying and didnt know I had 'issues'. Who read your cards for you? Id love to know whats in store for me baby wise! My DH Is off overseas again mid this year so we dont have a very good chance this year with all the pre-deployment training etc to concieve. Oh well, IVF here we come!

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I was at Bankstown Centro with a friend and just decided to get my cards read , its a little place near Big W. I also had a (medium) reading done in October 09 by a lady whos little girl did swimming with my DS - she was amazing. Described where I grew up, my school uniform, my uncles that had passed. She told me there would be someone pass in September 09 from our family , my mum passed on 31st Aug. Really spot on with a lot of things. I want to have another reading from her soon.

:crossfingers: everything goes smoothly with your IVF!

:rofl: Ofcourse I know you, der. I was just thinking Annabelle looked so familiar in your ticker. Well I will see you saturday! (And yep they are working together atm lol)

Soph, my DH is off overseas very soon too!

Hmm might have to go for a wander to that card reader at Centro. Last psychic reading I had was at the MBS festival when Stelly was 9mths old. She told me like all the other readings Ive had that we would have a fourth (little girl!). Im getting a bit sceptical now that it will never happen :( We considered doing frozen sperm IUI while Dh is gone but depending on the test results on thurs we'll prob just wait til he gets back or stop TTC alltogether.

Soph, will you do IVF while DH is away?

Freya: The plan is to keep TTC naturally until he leaves (but with all the pre-deployment 'hoo ha' DH wont be around much, as you know, especially given he is a commando) and then give IVF a go while he is gone. I really hope it happens naturally though because I really dont want to have to deal with all the stress that goes with IVF and all of the appointments will be hard to juggle with finding someone to babysit my DD. But you gotta do what you gotta do!!