Text of a letter from a kid from Romagna to Mum and Dad. (For Those of you not in the know, Romagna is a small town, west of Quilpie in the far south west of Queensland )

Dear Mum & Dad,

I am well. Hope youse are too. Tell me big brothers Doug and Phil that the Army is better than workin’ on the station – tell them to get in bloody quick smart before the jobs are all gone! I wuz a bit slow in settling down at first, because ya don’t hafta get outta bed until 6am. But I like sleeping in now, cuz all ya gotta do before brekky is make ya bed and shine ya boots and clean ya uniform. No bloody horses to get in, no calves to feed, no troughs to clean – nothin’!! Ya haz gotta shower though, but its not so bad, coz there’s lotsa hot water and even a light to see what ya doing!

At brekky ya get cereal, fruit and eggs but there’s no kangaroo steaks or goanna stew like wot Mum makes. You don’t get fed again until noon and by that time all the city boys are buggered because we’ve been on a ‘route march’ – geez its only just like walking to the windmill in the bullock paddock!!

This one will kill me brothers Doug and Phil with laughter. I keep getting medals for shootin’ – dunno why. The bullseye is as big as a bloody dingo’s arse and it don’t move and it’s not firing back at ya like the Johnsons did when our big scrubber bull got into their prize cows before the Ekka last year! All ya gotta do is make yourself comfortable and hit the target – it’s a piece of piss!! You don’t even load your own cartridges, they comes in little boxes, and ya don’t have to steady yourself against the rollbar of the roo shooting truck when you reload!

Sometimes ya gotta wrestle with the city boys and I gotta be real careful coz they break easy – it’s not like fighting with Doug and Phil and Jack and Boori and Steve and Muzza all at once like we do at home after the muster.

Turns out I’m not a bad boxer either and it looks like I’m the best the platoon’s got, and I’ve only been beaten by this one bloke from the Engineers – he’s 6 foot 5 and 15 stone and three pick handles across the shoulders and as ya know I’m only 5 foot 7 and eight stone wringin’ wet, but I fought him till the other blokes carried me off to the boozer.

I can’t complain about the Army – tell the boys to get in quick before word gets around how bloody good it is.

Your loving daughter,

Susan

Walking can add minutes to your life.
This enables you at 85 years old to spend
an additional 5 months in a nursing home
at $7000 per month.

My grandpa started walking
five miles a day when he was 60.
Now he’s 97 years old and we
don’t know where the hell he is..

I like long walks,
especially when they are taken
by people who annoy me.

The only reason I would take up walking
is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
I have to walk early in the morning,
before my brain figures out what I’m doing.

I joined a health club last year …
spent about 400 bucks.
Haven’t lost a pound.
Apparently you have to go there.

Every time I hear the dirty word ‘exercise’,
I wash my mouth out with chocolate.

I do have flabby thighs,
but fortunately my stomach covers them.

The advantage of exercising every day
is so when you die, they’ll say,
‘Well, she looks good doesn’t she.’

If you are going to try cross-country skiing,
start with a small country.

I know I got a lot of exercise the last few years, …
… just getting over the hill.

We all get heavier as we get older,
because there’s a lot more information in our heads.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it …

… and

Every time I start thinking too much about how I look,
I just find a Happy Hour, and by the time I leave,
I look just fine.