Rusty Bugles

Rusty Bugles, written by Sumner Lock Elliot was written in 1948. It is set in an ordnance depot in the Northern Territory in 1944. Whilst in World war two it’s characters are sixteen Australian soldiers who are bored to the point of going “Troppo” with the stagnation besetting the outpost.

The play is about the boredom of life in a remote Northern Territory army camp far from the progress of the real war, grown out of the author’s real experience. It is a clever, funny play full of closely observed Australian types with hardly a character who doesn’t ring true.

They live in huts and work in buildings shaped like igloos. They never saw Japanese planes and were never bombed, machine-gunned or sniped. Nobody knew they existed and yet they spent years waiting for leave or something to happen. They were soldiers that had to fight another type of enemy, boredom.

The soldiers lived close and tried to make the time pass as quick as possible. They are typical soldiers, har...