Back in the 1970/80s following a pilot course graduation the students and instructors would “deploy” to Rottnest Island off the coast of Perth, Western Australia for a so called survival training exercise.  The contingent stayed in the old Army barracks and receive lectures on various subjects surrounding sea survival following an unplanned descent into the sea that has occurred by way of being separated from ones former mode of aviation transport due to an unforeseen emergency.  As part of this exercise students were taken out to sea in a Navy workboat and unceremoniously dumped overboard and left to be “rescued” by the awaiting helicopter.  Once rescued the students were transported by the helicopter back to the Army barracks and that was it for the day.  On my pilot course we had a relatively senior officer (we were merely cadets) a Flight Lieutenant by the name of John Benjamin.  Benji, as he is known, had been a GCI which is a Ground Controlled Intercept controller that basically assisted fighter pilots to intercept hostile aircraft by guiding them to a point where a successful ‘kill’ could be achieved.  As such Benji was well known to the instructors present because most of them were fighter pilots.  On this day Benji was sitting around in the workboat trying to avoid being thrown overboard.  As it turned out all the other students had been rescued and deposited back at the barracks, so Benji was last on the list.  The instructors picked up on Benji’s reluctance to enter the sea and his desire to avoid the swim and so they descended on him and took off his flying suit and threw him into the sea stark naked.  Feeling sorry for him they eventually threw him a life jacket to put on so he could at least float while awaiting the helicopter to come and rescue him.  The helicopter arrived overhead poor Benji and winched him out of the water at which point the helicopter crewman in charge of the winch realised and relayed to the pilot that the ‘survivor’ was naked.  Simultaneously, the Rottnest Island ferry was docking at the nearby ferry wharf and people were disembarking from it with quite a crowd assembled on the wharf.  The helicopter crew seeing this decided to show everyone on the wharf what they had dangling below the aircraft.  Now what you need to realise is that when you are being winched up by the helicopter and you have a life vest on you can only look up at the helicopter and you have no idea where you are or what is happening.  So the helicopter crew deftly placed poor Benji in amongst the assembled crowd at various intervals with out letting his feet touch the ground of course.  The astonished crowd could only look on in amazed amusement at this spectacle.  Not satisfied with this the helicopter crew then transported Benji over to the beer garden at the Rottnest pub and “Teabagged” him amongst the patrons for good measure.  Now thoroughly happy with the ‘teabagging’ the crew decided to take Benji back to the barracks for release.  Unfortunately the Rottnest Island school bus with a full load of students had arrived at the barracks to watch the helicopter unload its cargo, a naked man in a life vest.  What the bus driver and the students thought about this can only be imagined.  Once Benji felt his feet touch the ground he extricated himself from the winching harness where he could now finally look around, only to see a bus load of goggle-eyed children staring at him through the bus windows.  A panicked scurry into the safety of the barracks and the event was over?  Not So!

There were no mobile phones back then but there were many landline phones on Rottnest Island and the story quickly filtered to the media where a military scandal was brewing.  I’m not sure who from the RAAF Base at Pearce got onto the phone and managed to suppress the story but it never made it into the newspapers or the television, a very near and lucky thing for the perpetrators of the scandalous “Teabag Incident” whose careers might have been severely shortened if the top brass had found out.