As one of the first environmental health officers, Flying Officer Rayneil Shandil is leading community outreach and health promotion on Exercise Kummundoo 2024.
Flying Officer Shandil’s ancestors moved to Fiji under the indentured labouring system (locally called Girmit). He moved to Australia with his family in high school and tried his hand at forensics before finding his calling in Air Force.
“Exercise Kummundoo is primarily about community engagement,” Flying Officer Shandil said.
“It creates opportunities for Air Force aviators to deploy into unique environments to assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities on mutually agreed projects.
“While working on Country is different to working on bases, many health changes are universal, and hand hygiene and food hygiene can make a huge difference.
“My role has been proactive community engagement – out in the community doing hand-washing activities, scabies awareness and workshopping nit-buster program.”
Flying Officer Shandil spent a day with the Job Pathways and Orange Sky laundry truck, talking with locals and operators about defeating nits, scabies and other environmental health issues.
Junior, who drives the OrangeSky truck and helps communities in and around Kununurra with its use, spent a day working with Flying Officer Shandil.
“When I first started working at Job Pathways, I was very very shy, but now I love to yarn with people when they do their laundry,” he said.
“We use the hot wash to kill the bugs, and I have learned more about them talking to Ray. He made it easy to understand, and to make changes – like it takes lots of hot washes over a long time to kill them.”
Exercise Kummundoo is Air Force’s commitment to Australia’s Closing the Gap initiative.
