01 / Hear
Hear the Song
02 / Know
Know the Story
I went to the Gulf to record the truth. Then I found myself inside the story.
Welcome to the Gulf is the first half of the journey that continues in Long Way Home: the flight from Baghdad, the work on KAAOT and the day the observer became part of the story.
Why we went
We were a three-person ADF media team—a reporter, videographer and photographer—sent to interview Australians serving on KAAOT, film messages home and tell the truth about their work. We carried cameras and notebooks, but also weapons. We were there to witness, not pretend the danger belonged only to someone else.
545 kilometers east
An S-70B-2 Seahawk carried us 545 kilometers from Baghdad toward the Gulf, working around threat corridors and restricted airspace. At KAAOT we were winched twenty meters onto hot steel, one at a time, with salt, fuel and sea in the air.
Where the trouble comes from
The commander pointed across the water: ‘That direction is where the trouble comes from.’ During the day, two fast boats approached and rifle fire crossed the water. We took cover while the security detail responded. The boats turned away and nobody was hurt, but the commander’s calm told us this was not extraordinary to him.
The man looking back
Later he handed me his binoculars. I scanned the damaged oil platforms until I found a man on a distant structure staring directly back through his own binoculars. Until then, the enemy had been an idea beyond the horizon. For a moment he was another human being doing what I was doing—trying to identify the threat.
How do I explain this?
At dinner I wondered how to explain the day to Sharna and my family without making it sound like a bad action movie: a helicopter across Iraq, a winch onto an oil terminal, gunfire from fast boats and a stranger looking back.
Write it down
I wrote it down because that was my duty. No crown, medal or grand speech—only the responsibility to get the story right. Welcome to the Gulf is about people doing their jobs, the danger around them and the instant an enemy became a human being in my eyes.
03 / Feel
Feel the Soul
What I want you to feel
The truth is rarely as simple as us and them. Sometimes it is another pair of eyes across the water, doing exactly what yours are doing.
Keep listening
Choose where to go next.
Or choose another route
← Back to All Songs