They Flew Low, Loud, and Overloaded
We first met the Australians in Qui Nhon — while diving with the U.S. Navy and Australian E.O.D. units searching vessels outside the harbor for explosives, in support of Operation STABLE DOOR.
When we moved down to Vung Tau, they were all over the place. Their Forward Operation Base was just 20 miles northwest of us, in Nui Dat. They were some hard drinking, hard working, hard fighting dudes . . .
NUI DAT
The Delta Divers didn’t just move by truck or boat. In Vietnam, getting from one job to another often meant hitching rides on whatever aircraft had room — and for us, that sometimes meant we got to fly with the Australians of “Wallaby Airlines.”
Their Caribou transports looked rough, sounded rougher, and could land in places that barely qualified as airstrips. The Aussies flew low, short, and into places most larger aircraft avoided altogether. Somewhere between cargo hauler, bush plane, and flying pickup truck, the Caribou became part of the rhythm of the war in places where roads, ports, and supply lines were unreliable — or simply didn’t exist.
For the Delta Divers, Wallaby Airlines became one more piece of the strange, improvised world that existed around the water side of Vietnam.