BOWEN RSL

28/05/2026

Stalwart of the RSL, John Eyles, recently celebrated his birthday. Congratulations John 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

27/05/2026

Our Bowen Rugby Union team the Jennies organised a football competition on ANZAC Day and donated the proceeds of $780 to Bowen RSL 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻. Thanks girls! Here are some of the team presenting a signed jersey for display at our club.

08/05/2026

Social photos from ANZAC Day + Friday. Always a good time at the RSL, open each Friday 3.30pm to 6pm. All welcome for drinks, raffles and ode at 5.30pm. Lest We Forget🙏

05/05/2026

Lest we forget

Megan Pelly was twenty-two. It was her first day at sea. The ship was HMAS Westralia. The date was 5 May 1998.

She had grown up in Dalby, on the Darling Downs in Queensland. Her father Lyndon had served with the 2nd Field Engineers, Australian Army. Her aunt was Army. Her sister Kimberley was Army. The Pellys were green to the bone. Megan went Navy.

As a girl she followed her father onto his engineering jobs, asking endless questions and learning the name of every tool he handed her. She was fascinated by the mechanics of things. At Dalby State High she made the top five per cent and took the lunchtime tuition the school offered its brighter students. She graduated with High Achievement and Very High Achievement in chemistry and biological science, in the top ten per cent of Queensland graduates. She applied to the Australian Defence Force Academy as a Royal Australian Navy Engineer Midshipman. She was accepted.

In 1996, on leave from ADFA, she challenged her father to a tandem skydive. Lyndon Pelly was not so sure. They both survived. Megan told him life should be full of excitement and commitment.

In December 1997 she graduated. The Pellys came down from Dalby for the parade. The grin never left her face. The 'real' navy was about to begin.

Five months later she joined HMAS Westralia. On 5 May 1998 the ship sailed from Fleet Base West for a South East Asian deployment. At 10:35 that morning, a fuel hose burst in the main machinery space and the engine room caught fire. Megan Pelly helped lay out hoses to fight it. The smoke took her within five minutes.

Three others died with her. Able Seaman Phillip Carroll, Marine Technician, twenty-three, was closest to the exit when the fire erupted. He told the others to get out, then turned back into the smoke to look for missing colleagues. Petty Officer Shaun Smith, twenty-nine, the assistant engineer, went to the middle plates to fight the fire. He stayed behind to help others escape. Leading Seaman Bradley Meek, twenty-five, was working to evacuate his shipmates when the smoke took him. All three were posthumously awarded the Bravery Medal.

It was her first day at sea.

Lest we forget.

Rod Hutchings
Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans’ Association Ltd

25/04/2026

Good crowds attended both ANZAC Day services in Bowen. Thank you to all who paid their respects.

20/04/2026

All happening at the RSL. Our Secretary, Marty Tanzer, was finally presented with his Australia Day Award by Garry Player, NQ District President. Remember this Saturday is ANZAC Day, beginning with Dawn Service at 5.45am at the Cenotaph and March at 9am from RSL to Cenotaph for service. And our Cenotaph is 100 years old this year! Lest We Forget.

14/04/2026

The Easter raffle was drawn on 2nd April with the winner being regular member Sandy (RAAF), his daughter Alison Mackie picked it up for him. Regular raffle winner was committee member Dave Chambers. Preparations are underway for ANZAC Day.

09/04/2026

Judy and Rhonda, who are social members of Bowen RSL, have been out and about visiting local businesses and delivering this letter and poster seeking donations to go towards the Bowen RSL seating expansion project. The fundraising will culminate with one of our Service Members and Vietnam Veteran, Chris Atkins swimming 80 lengths of the pool on his 80th birthday on 23 May. So far, $3000 has been raised from donations and an Easter raffle. Our target is $35,700. Thanks for your support. Next commemorative day at the RSL is ANZAC Day on 25th April.

08/04/2026

Lest We Forget

The humidity hits you first. Three metres of visibility through green so dense it swallows sound. Your boots sink into rotting leaf matter. The man ahead of you is a shape, not a face. Somewhere in the canopy above, something moves. You do not know if it is a bird or a rifle barrel. You keep walking. That is the job. You walk until something happens.

On 8 April 1969, something happened to Trevor Black.
In Mackay they called him Blackie. Twenty-one years old, a North Queensland boy from sugar country, Church of England. National Service had drawn his birthday out of the barrel in 1968. Plenty of Mackay boys went the same way. The town had always sent its sons.

Trevor Ralph Black enlisted in Brisbane on 19 May 1968. The Tet Offensive had broken across television screens three months earlier. He knew what he was walking toward.
The Army posted him to A Company, 9th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. He arrived in Vietnam on 26 November 1968 and joined the battalion on 7 January 1969.

He walked straight into Operation Goodwood, the long sweep through Bien Hoa and Long Khanh provinces. For the men on the ground, Goodwood meant weeks of patrolling through country so thick you could see three metres ahead and no further. The enemy used snipers, mines, and bunkers dug under the roots of the jungle. You found them by walking into them.

Goodwood gave way to Federal, and Federal gave way to Overland. By early April, A Company was operating from Fire Support Base Wattle, clearing bunker systems along the Long Khanh border. On 6 April, C Company found a complex of ninety-eight bunkers with a hospital buried inside it. The enemy was not passing through. They lived there.

Two days later, A Company moved through dense primary jungle in the same area. They made contact. In the exchange of fire, Trevor Black was hit. A gunshot wound to the head. He died in the scrub of Long Khanh Province, three months after joining the battalion. He was twenty-one.

They brought him home. His family buried him at Bowen General Cemetery, Grave 2954, close enough to Mackay that the people who knew him could stand at the stone. His name sits on Panel 6 at the Australian War Memorial and on twelve memorials across four states.

8 April 1969. Trevor Ralph Black. Blackie. Twenty-one years old.

Lest we forget

Rod Hutchings
Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans’ Association Ltd

29/03/2026

Bowen RSL has supported Isaiah Howell following his selection in the team of Qld students winning the Qld Premier’s ANZAC Award and he will be travelling to Villers-Bretonneux, France, where he will visit his great uncle’s grave. He was able to host a fundraising trivia night at the RSL and Bowen RSL contributed $200 towards the team’s chosen charity- Mates4Mates which supports veterans and their transition to civilian life. He also has an RSL shirt to wear on the trip and a wreath to lay on our behalf. All the best for a safe and empowering trip Isaiah.