RMC Duntroon’s Commandant Major General Murray Blake, before then after the time of Julian Knight’s term at Duntroon from his elite selection and enthusiasm for Army Officer training, aged just 18.
The Australian Army’s Royal Military College at Duntroon (RMC-D), situated in the nation’s capital Canberra, is not what it is all cracked up to be, and never has been. This from a cadet experience, many cadets!
Duntroon is not about becoming an ‘Officer and a Gentleman’, nor about receiving military best practice to become a platoon commanders in just 18 months from civvy street.
Rather, from experience of many contributors to this website, and from Julian Knight himself, a former Army Officer Staff Cadet who attended Duntroon in 1987, the institution is a bully boy boarding school for 18 to 23 year olds (recruit ’em while their still naive) who like to play boy soldiers marching and with weapons. The course used to be 4 years in duration and include a degree. But since 1986, Army wisdom removed the degree and fast tracked (rushed) the military training compressed into 18 months.
It inculcates negative leadership and intra-company distrust, rivalries, resentment and hate. Senior cadets ranked at just six months of Duntroon training apart 1st Class and 2nd Class are institutionally pitted against and encouraged to discipline and bully incoming junior (freshmen) 3rd Class cadets from Day 1. The seniors had bullying done to them, so they then get their own back with each new six monthly intake. Bullying inculcates bullies to repeat the behaviour. Such is Duntroon’s hidden ‘weeding out’ culture that dates to its very inception back in 1911.
Contrary to the Army’s Recruitment marketing, Duntroon does not set its graduates up for leading soldiers in war, nor set up its graduates to later lead in corporate and civilian life.
Junior cadets in their first 6 months in 3rd Class are disrespected with contempt by the senior cadets – it’s Duntroon Bastardisation culture to weed out those who passed the Selection Board previously as assessed as valid applicant for Army ‘officer material.
However, the Duntroon Brass (mostly participants on that same Selection Board), from Day 1 of the junior cadets arrival at Duntroon are delegated by the Duntroon Brass for senior cadets in barracks to weed out any who may have snuck through the selection process successfully, yet upon scrutiny by the incumbent senior cadets, delegated to set and administer the cultural standards, week out and persecute any perceived unsuitables.
Such targeted unsuitables get bullied, belittled, bashed, bastardised – of course out-of-sight within company accommodation barracks and mostly at night, but with the Duntroon Brass well condoning the cruel and criminal abuse, mentally, physically and sexually by senior cadets to weed out those who don’t conform to its unspoken culture of absolute unquestioned obedience.
Such draconian treatment and bastardisation is not revealed in Duntroon’s recruitment process by its Selection Board. “Are you a bully and a good one?” is not one of the application psychometric test questions; yet, it should be.
It’s not a place for independent leaders. It is not a place for women. The place and perverted culture has not changed. It is a bastion of immature bullies akin to ‘Tom Brown School Days’, and ‘Full Metal Jacket’.
WARNING: Duntroon is not a place for women. Recall the Skype scandal? ADFA Cadet Daniel McDonald, 21, secretly filmed himself having sex with a female cadet and the vision was broadcast via Skype to several of their colleagues in 2011.
Since 1986, ADFA cadets intending an Army Officer career, have graduated automatically to attend RMC Duntroon. They take their sick and depraved bullying culture with them. This is what happened with Julian Knight. An outsider from the Army Reserves, Julian Knight in his junior cadet intake to Duntroon of 1987, subjected to the bastardising culture of ADFA graduate Philip John (“Mongo”) REED being the lead 1st Class senior cadet appointed Company Sergeant Major (CSM) in Knight’s allocated Kokoda Company.
Read On.