Three months after signing on as the Commandant of the Combined Arms Training Centre and the Australian Defence Force officer at Puckapunyal military area, Colonel Patrick Davison has already opened the gates to the community.
The base hosted a community open day on Saturday, April 9. About 1000 people registered to attend.
“Everyone who’s in uniform came from the Australian community,” Col Davison said, before what may have been the first open day at the army base.
“You have people who have history going back decades with this place and have not been back for a long, long time, and then you have people who don’t have a clue what happens out here.
“It’s a great opportunity for people to come in here and see what we’re doing.”
Col Davison signed up to join the army at 17 and has been posted to Brisbane, Darwin, Townsville and even Hawaii during his career.
He has served in East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq and Fiji.
It is not the first time he has been posted to Puckapunyal.
He previously lived at the training camp for eight months of the year for two years.
This time, he lives in Beveridge with his wife Allison and twin daughters Eloise and Grace, 5.
“My wife teaches piano, so to live on base here would have actually been more difficult,” Col Davison said.
“I would have had to sign everybody in to do the lessons face-to-face.”
In Col Davison’s eyes, the base is an important Australian cultural site.
“Thousands of national servicemen came through here prior to the Vietnam War,” he said.
“Tens of thousands of people out there who were cadets and didn’t end up in the army trained here, who would have memories and knowledge of Puckapunyal.”
In 2016, the base’s population was recorded as 1078 people, including 228 families.
Col Davison said the base typically had about 3000 army personnel and civilians daily.
That number swells to as many as 6000 when army cadets and the fourth brigade from Melbourne come to train.
He said the purpose behind the open day was to engage Puckapunyal’s community with the area.
“The open day started out as trying to let people on base know about wineries, sporting clubs, community groups and so on,” he said.
“Then we thought, ‘well, let’s just open it up and get people in so they can see what Puckapunyal is’.”
It’s a step towards improving the relationship between Puckapunyal, Seymour and surrounds.
“We’re a big, busy military base where we blow stuff up a lot, and without understanding why we’re doing it, how we’re doing it, it can be an understandable source of frustration,” Col Davison said.
“I’m keen to start having those conversations to find out what we can do, what our opportunities are.
“It’s not the army, it’s our army — it belongs to all of us.”