I was toiling to make the pitch perfect. Then the commandos choppered in

The first hint that today would be different was a rumbling far off, somewhere over the surrounding hills. Was it thunder? Not likely. The sky was diamond bright, the air hot. It was mid-afternoon on the kind of Canberra summer day that dries out your nostrils and turns your boogers brown.

Everything, in other words, was normal. Except for that odd growling in the distance.

The problem insoluble, I put my head down and returned to my task.

I was making considerable noise myself. Or more accurately, the mechanical cricket pitch roller that was inching me one way up 22 yards of turf, then back down it again in reverse, was making the noise. I was simply enduring it. Yard after footsore yard.

Fresh out of school, I’d been appointed for one week in December as a groundsman at the Royal Military College Duntroon. The job – my first involving actual payment – was to help spruce up the grounds for Christmas. It was 1985 and the $272 wage seemed an unimaginably generous sum. It would buy presents for my whole family.

By February, I was still working there. My aim was to sock away as much cash as possible for my gap-year Europe trip starting in June. On this particular day, my task was rolling cricket pitches. Sometimes, though, I struggled to work out if I was achieving anything at all.

The pitch was one of four on an expanse of adjoining ovals. This one looked more like a patch of springy backyard grass than the rock-hard turf that adult cricketers might expect to play on when they turned up in laundered whites on the weekend.

The roller was heavy, loud, smelly and slow. But as soon as it had passed over a patch of ground, the turf popped back up again, more or less as before. I switched the vibrator on, gave it more oomph. The sound was appalling, the ground quivered under my boots, the grass remained unmoved.

And even still, over the top of the clatter, I could hear this other sound, a bass note, becoming louder. I took another look. Still nothing to see. Perhaps it was some airborne activity at the nearby airport?

My boss, Baz, was nowhere to be seen – reclining sensibly somewhere in the shade, no doubt. I didn’t resent his afternoon snooze. He was a good boss. He’d taught me a lot: how to smoke a bong, then eat a Mars bar and undertake some particularly wayward line-marking on the top oval. I also learned how to score darts, how to change spark plugs and use creosote, and that not everyone was white and middle-class with pretensions of intellectualism – a description of everyone I’d met to that point. They were valuable lessons.

Suddenly, over the yellowed summer vegetation on Mount Ainslie’s side, the mysterious noise exploded into the open and resolved into objects – one, two, four military helicopters, camouflage paint glinting dully in the westerly sun, doors open, noses down, hard charging towards me.

“What the f---?” I muttered, looking around for the enemy. I halted the roller and squinted to the north as they swarmed across Fairbairn Avenue, tearing at the tops of the conifers. And then, as one, they propped, stopped, and hovered, spread out at intervals overhead. I peered up. The noise was deafening. Choppity chop. My roller sounded like a popgun in the presence of cannons. I was the only vertical object in attendance. I felt a little exposed.

Ropes burst from the open doorways, spiralling to the ground, and one by one, the soldiers appeared, looked out briefly, then rappelled out, guns slung on their backs.

Were orders shouted and obeyed as they landed hard, swung their rifles around and flung themselves on their bellies? Did they really say “hut hut” as they commando crawled past me while I stood quietly watching, the roller chugging to itself? I doubt it. I think I’ve retrofitted that memory from a scene in The Blues Brothers, but it feels right to me now. It suited the mood.

Because, as the helicopters disgorged their content of cadets, then as they belly shuffled their way across the oval to a gathering point under the trees on the far side, I enjoyed a quiet chuckle.

Then I resumed my work.

Assault training is all very well, but I had a job to do.

And this pitch wasn’t going to roll itself.

Michael Bachelard is a senior writer and former deputy editor at The Age.

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