From ham radio to Bushmaster in Ukraine

With Australia's new prime minister visiting Europe, one of the hot topics in the news was whether he would visit Ukraine and maybe give them some more Bushmasters. He did.

When I did my ham radio exam back in 1993, it was in a room at the defence factory in Bendigo, Australia. Not long after that I got onto the two meter band and made contact with the cosmonauts on the Mir space station and the NASA STS-59 Shuttle mission.

The world has changed and I doubt anybody in Bendigo today would like the thought of Russian spacecraft passing overhead. The defence factories in Bendigo were acquired by Thales and that is where they are making the Bushmasters.

In other words, some of the Bushmasters in Ukraine may have been assembled by people I went to school with. Pictures were recently published showing one that was destroyed by Putin.

In Openstreetmap, you can see Bushmaster Court is also not that far from Lake Weeroona and the rowing club.