Our People in VIC
Tracey Connors - After the Earthquake
Australian Army medics are working hard to look after the injured in Sumatra, and it’s the job of Sale woman Tracey Connors to look after the medics.
Working long hours in a foreign country on a humanitarian relief mission can be tough physically and mentally; that’s why morale is such an important factor.
Senior soldier Tracey, a Warrant Officer Class 1 and Regimental Sergeant Major, is now based at the Army’s primary health care facility in Sungai Geringging, a remote earthquake-shattered village near Padang in West Sumatra.
“I’m an advisor to the commander, responsible for discipline, training of soldiers, and I also oversee their career management,” Tracey said.
Tracey joined the Army as a medic in 1991 at 21 years of age. It’s something she had always wanted to do growing up.
“My family has always put a lot of prestige in the military, and my dad was in the RAAF,” she said. “Military life was always put on a pedestal in our family.”
This is Tracey’s third overseas deployment, after East Timor and the Solomon Islands, and it brings more responsibility that normal.
“With no family contact the effects on morale deployed here are a lot more prominent so, as the senior soldier, I will engage everybody to find issues that may affect morale and the workplace.”
When she gets a chance WO1 Connors likes to go and play soccer with the local kids on the oval where they’ve set up the facility.
“I play soccer so I’m a hit with the young kids, they think I’m a bit of a rock star,” she said.
“The work here is hard, but the rewards are fabulous. This is what we join for.”
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.