Liz Cosson - Planning the withdrawal

Transcript

I wanted to come home because I miss my family very much but I also loved being there. And I know that when we were leaving and saying goodbye, it was an emotional time and handing over to my successor, I did feel proud of what we did because the commander had asked me during my period there to have a look at the planning for coming off Bougainville, how we would wind down our presence because, as we've talked about, the community had come a long way over the period of the peace monitoring group and there would be a time when our forces would need to leave.

So we had done some extensive planning with our team sites and particularly our colleagues from New Zealand, they were responsible for one of the key sites on when would we start to withdraw our forces. So a lot of that planning had been done and I felt proud of that, being able to hand that over to my successor, but just saying goodbye to those that we built connections with. But I knew that we're leaving it in good hands, new commander, new chief of staff and new team site leaders, and we'd been able to stagger that, over that period and I'm proud of where they are today.