AussieJohnDoe
12-05-2006, 07:31 AM
Risks and rewards
Battlefields and charity walks are all the same to David Mason, writes Vivienne Skinner.
IF DAVID MASON could slip back in time, there's no doubt he would have been trekking alongside 19th-century explorers such as Burke and Wills. As it is, the 45-year-old Canberra lawyer makes do with 21st-century adventures, such as his 1998 walk across Australia and his recent attempt to cross Lake Eyre.
There's also the five years in the French Foreign Legion jumping from planes and fighting wars in the Horn of Africa, time in Baghdad as a military adviser and his work as a peace monitor in Bougainville. And turning around in his head right now is a possible solo canoe trip up Papua New Guinea's Fly River, into territory rarely seen by Europeans.
The signs were always there. His mother asked the doctor setting her son's latest cracked limb if he had soft bones. "No," said the doctor, "I think he's got a soft head."
As a youth, Mason was heading out each holiday to western NSW. In Lightning Ridge, aged 15, he met a bloke who invited him to work in an opal mine. He spent every holiday hunting for opals. "We found not a thing," Mason says. But deep down in the shaft was the closest he ever came to death, when the air stopped circulating and Mason got out just in time, a powerful nine-hour headache the only damage.
When he turned 18, Mason spent a year travelling around Australia before returning to Canberra to study arts and law. "It was a tough six years because I didn't really want to be there." To amuse himself, he boxed and at one stage was the Australian intervarsity light welterweight runner-up.
Joining a law practice and breaking his day into billable six-minute segments was an unlikely option. "I checked with my friends who were doing it and none of them articulated any happiness."
He'd always been in the army reserve so thought about signing up to the Australian Army for some active service. But Australia in the late 1980s was enjoying an unusual period of peace.
"I thought, 'Why join an army that isn't going to do anything?' So I looked around the world to see who was involved in small wars and insurgencies. Oh, yes. The French Foreign Legion. I'll give that a go."
He didn't fit the usual profile of a legionnaire and had to battle to be recruited. "The majority of legionnaires are semi-literate, many have criminal backgrounds and barely know what a map of the globe looks like.
The French Government likes it that way, so that if you are killed, badly hurt or commit suicide, there aren't annoying letters to the Ministry for Defence."
He topped the recruitment course and could choose his posting. "I thought, where's the best chance for a war? There's bound to be one in the Horn of Africa. So I went to the Republic of Djibouti and was posted to a sniper platoon." The five years he spent in the French Foreign Legion were hard and often miserable. He had to bury babies who had died of thirst fleeing with their mothers from the fighting. One day, with a rebel soldier in the telescopic sights of his rifle, he thought "there's got to be something better than this".
He returned to Australia, where he completed a masters degree in defence studies, took up a post as a lawyer and then plotted his transcontinental walk.
In 1998, with three camels carrying his supplies, Mason walked from the east coast to the west. It took eight months. He raised $1 million for the Fred Hollows Foundation and in 1999 was named the Australian Geographic Society's Adventurer of the Year. Earlier this year, he abandoned after two days an attempt to complete the first solo and unsupported crossing of Lake Eyre on foot. Under the salt crust is slushy black mud: even with snow shoes, movement became impossible.
Mason is now an international lawyer with the Department of Defence, looking at rules of engagement for our forces on overseas duty. He is able to put into context things such as how and when a weapon may be used. He was sent to Baghdad as a civilian adviser in 2004 and is keen to return.
"I don't publicise my background but the military is pretty small and everyone knows. It certainly helps when I'm in meetings with senior defence force officers," Mason says.
Curriculum vitae
Name David Mason
Age 45
Jobs opal miner, judge's associate, corporal with French Foreign Legion, adventurer, fund-raiser, monitor in Bougainville, counsel in international law for Department of Defence, policy adviser to Department of Defence in Baghdad. Captain in Australian Army Reserve
Education BA (hons), LLB, graduate diploma in military law, master of law (with merit), masters in defence studies.
Life motto You don't have to do what others think is right or appropriate.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/employment-news/risks-and-rewards/2006/11/17/1163266744758.html
Battlefields and charity walks are all the same to David Mason, writes Vivienne Skinner.
IF DAVID MASON could slip back in time, there's no doubt he would have been trekking alongside 19th-century explorers such as Burke and Wills. As it is, the 45-year-old Canberra lawyer makes do with 21st-century adventures, such as his 1998 walk across Australia and his recent attempt to cross Lake Eyre.
There's also the five years in the French Foreign Legion jumping from planes and fighting wars in the Horn of Africa, time in Baghdad as a military adviser and his work as a peace monitor in Bougainville. And turning around in his head right now is a possible solo canoe trip up Papua New Guinea's Fly River, into territory rarely seen by Europeans.
The signs were always there. His mother asked the doctor setting her son's latest cracked limb if he had soft bones. "No," said the doctor, "I think he's got a soft head."
As a youth, Mason was heading out each holiday to western NSW. In Lightning Ridge, aged 15, he met a bloke who invited him to work in an opal mine. He spent every holiday hunting for opals. "We found not a thing," Mason says. But deep down in the shaft was the closest he ever came to death, when the air stopped circulating and Mason got out just in time, a powerful nine-hour headache the only damage.
When he turned 18, Mason spent a year travelling around Australia before returning to Canberra to study arts and law. "It was a tough six years because I didn't really want to be there." To amuse himself, he boxed and at one stage was the Australian intervarsity light welterweight runner-up.
Joining a law practice and breaking his day into billable six-minute segments was an unlikely option. "I checked with my friends who were doing it and none of them articulated any happiness."
He'd always been in the army reserve so thought about signing up to the Australian Army for some active service. But Australia in the late 1980s was enjoying an unusual period of peace.
"I thought, 'Why join an army that isn't going to do anything?' So I looked around the world to see who was involved in small wars and insurgencies. Oh, yes. The French Foreign Legion. I'll give that a go."
He didn't fit the usual profile of a legionnaire and had to battle to be recruited. "The majority of legionnaires are semi-literate, many have criminal backgrounds and barely know what a map of the globe looks like.
The French Government likes it that way, so that if you are killed, badly hurt or commit suicide, there aren't annoying letters to the Ministry for Defence."
He topped the recruitment course and could choose his posting. "I thought, where's the best chance for a war? There's bound to be one in the Horn of Africa. So I went to the Republic of Djibouti and was posted to a sniper platoon." The five years he spent in the French Foreign Legion were hard and often miserable. He had to bury babies who had died of thirst fleeing with their mothers from the fighting. One day, with a rebel soldier in the telescopic sights of his rifle, he thought "there's got to be something better than this".
He returned to Australia, where he completed a masters degree in defence studies, took up a post as a lawyer and then plotted his transcontinental walk.
In 1998, with three camels carrying his supplies, Mason walked from the east coast to the west. It took eight months. He raised $1 million for the Fred Hollows Foundation and in 1999 was named the Australian Geographic Society's Adventurer of the Year. Earlier this year, he abandoned after two days an attempt to complete the first solo and unsupported crossing of Lake Eyre on foot. Under the salt crust is slushy black mud: even with snow shoes, movement became impossible.
Mason is now an international lawyer with the Department of Defence, looking at rules of engagement for our forces on overseas duty. He is able to put into context things such as how and when a weapon may be used. He was sent to Baghdad as a civilian adviser in 2004 and is keen to return.
"I don't publicise my background but the military is pretty small and everyone knows. It certainly helps when I'm in meetings with senior defence force officers," Mason says.
Curriculum vitae
Name David Mason
Age 45
Jobs opal miner, judge's associate, corporal with French Foreign Legion, adventurer, fund-raiser, monitor in Bougainville, counsel in international law for Department of Defence, policy adviser to Department of Defence in Baghdad. Captain in Australian Army Reserve
Education BA (hons), LLB, graduate diploma in military law, master of law (with merit), masters in defence studies.
Life motto You don't have to do what others think is right or appropriate.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/employment-news/risks-and-rewards/2006/11/17/1163266744758.html