MEMBERS of the 8/7th Battalion, Royal Victoria Regiment, returned home on the weekend, exhausted but exhilarated after a four-month tour of duty in the Solomon Islands.
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The troops were part of the Army Reserve's 22nd rotation to the tiny Pacific nation, which for the past decade has struggled to bring ethnic tensions and disorder under control.
The 8/7th has been undertaking a support role to the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), a 15-nation response led by Australia to bring stability to the region.
By the end of the 1990s, the violence had got so out of hand government services services and law and order and broken down. In 2000, the nation was on the verge of bankruptcy and lawlessness when it appealed for international help.
RAMSI was formed by members of the Pacific Area Forum. The Australian Federal Police took on the lead agency role. Since then, the Army Reserve has rotated its battalions in support of the work being done by the AFP.
"Law and order has been restored, national institutions are being rebuilt and considerable progress has been made towards stabilising and reforming the economy," said Graeme Wilson, RAMSI's special co-ordinator in a recent report.
But the work is far from done and the RAMSI continues to have a significant presence.
The 8/7th Battalion, which has a depot in Warrnambool, has had 70 of its troops on the current deployment. It is the second time the battalion has sent a unit to the Solomons.
This time around, the Battalion arrived at the height of the August pre-election tension. The 2006 election saw an outbreak of violence on the streets of the capital, Honiara, when angry locals decided the vote had been rigged. The city was ravaged, Chinatown burned to the ground and RAMSI played a key role in restoring order.
There were fears of a repeat at this year's election and RAMSI officers and soldiers were out in force both before and after the August election.
"The first two months were very intense," said Private Lucas Brown, a 20-year-old apprentice builder from Warrnambool.
"It was a pretty tense time here during the elections (in August), but were here doing our job."
Thing eventually settled down and there has been little in the way of unrest since, so the soldiers have been able to busy themselves at Guadalcanal Beach Resort (don't be fooled by the name) undertaking training exercises, promotional courses and professional development exercises.
This rotation has included soldiers from depots at Ballarat, Geelong and Bendigo as well as Shepparton, Laverton, Mildura, Swan Hill, Warrnambool and Monegeetta. The Reservists, who all have full-time jobs or study commitments , take leave to participate in the deployment.
Their efforts were buoyed recently when the Defence Support Services flew some of their employers from home as part of Exercise Boss Lift.
The 8/7th Battalion's Warrnambool Depot sent four soldiers on the current deployment .
They took part in a welcome-home parade at Laverton RAAF base yesterday and underwent a series of debriefings before returning to Warrnambool to resume their other lives.
