Our People in QLD
Stephen Corkery - Ipswich Demolition Man
Two weeks on from the two earthquakes that shook West Sumatra, Padang State University is busy with students in coloured gowns celebrating their graduation with a lavish food, speeches and photographs.
Among the throng, Ipswich man Warrant Officer Class 2 Stephen Corkery carefully makes his way through the university’s now cracked and partially-collapsed buildings.
Stephen is a member of the ADF’s Engineering Structural Assessment Team currently deployed on Operation Padang Assist.
Growing up in Ipswich, Queensland, Stephen left Lowood High School aged 17 to join the Army as an apprentice carpenter in the Army’s Engineering Corps. Now 36, he is a Building Supervisor with the 19th Chief Engineering Works and normally based in Sydney.
He had just finished a deployment to Northern Queensland with the Army Aboriginal Community Assistance Program when he was urgently flown to Sumatra to apply his vital skills.
“. “That’s something I enjoy about the job,” said Stephen. “Everyday I turn up to work it’s different.
“One minute I’m working with ACAAP in Northern Queensland, the next I’m in West Sumatra.”
His job in Sumatra is to assess the government buildings in Padang that are still standing, to determine whether they can be saved or need knocking down.
“We’re part of a combined engineering effort coordinated by the United Nations,” he said.
“”Essentially we’ve been given a planning time-frame by the Indonesian Government, due to their legislation, to advise on whether they need to demolish the building or whether they can keep it standing.”
“It’s amazing the number of nations that have come out to support the relief effort,” he said.
Before re-deploying to Afghanistan for a second time, Stephen is looking forward to returning home to his wife Melissa and two sons, Jamie and Jordon, after his work in Padang is done.
“It will be great to spend some time with my wife and kids, I haven’t seen them for a while!” he said.
“We talk a lot on the phone, but it will be great to get home, spend some time with Melissa, and especially take the kids fishing, they love that.”
Australian soldiers, sailors and airmen are working day and night to provide health care, purified water, and to deliver aid supplies to the people of Padang and the surrounding areas of West Sumatra in the wake of the devastating earthquakes that recently rocked the Indonesian province.