The smell of chicken noodle soup drifts across a stretch of tarmac at RAAF Base Darwin, competing with the scent of jet fuel. It comes from a kitchen the Royal Thai Air Force brought with it from home, staffed by cooks who start work at 3 a.m. and finish well into the afternoon, feeding nearly a hundred people three meals a day, sometimes four. It is, by the account of the officer running the detachment, one of the more important pieces of equipment his unit deployed to Australia this year.


