1951 Black Shadow " Saigon Shadow"cairns Nth Q'id
Murray Raynes did well at school except in academics, he joined a water polo club and became a great boozer, trained as an electrician and never wired a house, a fighter pilot and never fired a shot in anger, flew big jets commercially and has a host of stories relating to very questionable, and sometimes outrageous, practices and behaviour from that industry. He has snorkelled, skied, ridden horses in most parts of the planet and has also completed a solo circumnavigation of the globe in a yacht (Raynes: A Fighter Pilot with Attitude, 2005).
As a child of the 1970s, I was a little detached from the Vietnam War. Some of our locals were known to be fighting over there. Friends’ brothers had been conscripted, or enlisted, and news of their adventures would filter back to us wide-eyed school kids. Then would come the inevitable shock and sadness when the community lost a favourite son to the Asian war.
For me, the war was made more complex by the continual news broadcasts of university students protesting the conflict that was intended to protect us from the threat of communism. These were the brightest of the bright, our future leaders being dragged off by police. In school, teachers would warn of the impending threat. If the Asian forces invaded Australia they would come for our land, our homes and our possessions, “and don’t bother running”, we were warned, “you can’t outrun bombs and bullets”. I was a farm kid and I knew where dad’s guns were – no one was taking my bike. Okay, so it was a Malvern Star bicycle but, to me, it was my world.
As I grew into my teens the threat from the North diminished and my love of two
