Were given orders to patrol something like, 400m along the power lines. Made a brief nav data sheet, just to please the officers, then headed off. It wasn't like we'd need a nav sheet anyway; one has to be pretty stupid to get lost following power lines in the bush.
The radio net was unfathomable. The callsigns were all weird, no one knew seriously who was in charge, because the callsigns were allocated all wrong. In my opinion anyway. I remember seeing a picture of the Radio Net drawn up somewhere, but I didn't note it down.
We ended up patrolling maybe 1 to 1.5km (4 or 5 pairs of pylons instead of just the 2 (3, maybe?) we had to do), up and back - therefore, twice - and then sat around for some... 3 - 4 hours, bitching about random topics, sleeping, eating, manning the radio...
Other groups found signs of the Illegal Immigrants not too far away from our position - in the bush near the power lines, actually. They were requesting that they extend their patrols, and I had half a mind to ask if our section could do it, but the mood of the section was that they didn't want to do anything (not even the CUO) so I didn't.
We didn't leave the pylon we were at until 1600 (we had to be back by 1700) because it was only a 10 minute walk back, and we wanted to put up our hoochies while it was still light.
Us females were allocated hoochie partners, with whom we also had to do sentry duty with. I was paired up with Selby, who seemed quite nice (this was only the third day, I didn't know her very well, but she got considerably worse as the week went on). We were given the hours 2200 to 0000. She had blisters from too much patrolling during the day, though, so I told her to go back into the hoochie and stay warm. "What if I fall asleep?" she worried. I was impressed by that, actually (most people, if told to go back to their hoochie during picket, would just go straight to sleep), so I told her to count how many times I passed our hoochie (since it had to be roaming picket after 2200), and I just walked the close perimeter of the female lines.
It got so cold, my steps just kept getting slower and slower; at times, I almost fell asleep on my feet it was so cold. After the first hour, I think she fell asleep, because I didn't hear her counting anymore.
I accidentally woke up CUO Bettice (sp?), who was sleeping in the same hoochie as the other two girls who I was suppose to wake up. I woke them up 10 minutes early, because at that time of night, people generally need more time to get ready and awake. One of them mumbled something about getting away with not doing it. To that, I just replied, "Well, I've just done two hours of roaming picket alone and woken yous up because it's your turn. Whether or not you choose to actually get up and do it is not my problem anymore."
Then I crawled into the hoochie, stripped, and went to sleep. I heard them getting dressed or something just before I fell asleep, but I really don't know if they roamed like they were supposed to.
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