The first thing you notice about Korean War veteran Charlie Boase is his gentle and kind smile.
At 92 years of age, Charlie has a lot to smile about.
"The family try to keep me controlled," he chuckles.
"But they mean just about everything [to me]," he says, as he chats about his eldest grandchild, who is about to finish university.
It was his family and his friends who were pivotal in his recovery after an accident that had him endure 25 operations on his face and hands.
'Didn't know if it was night or day'
It was 1954, the Korean War had ended and the leading aircraftman was part of the 77 (ground attack squadron) RAAF, tasked with dismantling equipment.
"We were moving base, from Kimpo to down south, prior to the squadron coming home," Charlie recalls.
"We were cleaning up and there were wrecked aeroplanes and we were chopping them up to fit onto trucks."
One of the belly tanks, a type of supplemental fuel tank strapped to World War II fighter planes, had fuel in it and erupted.
Charlie doesn't recall the explosion, but remembers how his friend came to his aid.
"My mate, who was giving me a hand – I don't know if I was helping him or he was helping me, he jumped up on the truck and threw me off," he says.
He was picked up by an American marine helicopter and taken to a ship in the harbour.
"I went to the American Hospital in Japan where I spent four months."
When he came home to Australia he spent another seven years in and out of the Richmond Hospital for Veterans in Sydney.
He chuckles as he recalls: "I was 20 something and I wasn't too keen on dying".
'I just kept going'
Charlie knows his smile captures more than a glance, because of the accident that changed his life.
"I look different from everybody else, I still get a bit embarrassed about it. It doesn't greatly worry me now."
At the time of his accident, he was told not to look in the mirror.
"No hair, I didn't know my face, bandages, and skin off here," pointing to his hands and arms.
"I thought I would see it through – I just kept going."
He recalls when his parents first saw him.
"I couldn't write – my fingers were stuck together, they had a web between them and I couldn't move them for months."
Love of his life
Charlie returned to Albury with his parents and married Theresa, or Terry as he affectionately calls her, an Air Force nurse who had helped to look after him in Sydney.
Charlie and Terry, who passed away in 2015, were married in 1964 at Sacred Heart North Albury.
Not far from there, they would raise their two daughters, Caroline and Louise, and have three granddaughters.
Charlie signed up for the RAAF because he wanted to contribute, and straight off the farm in Ganmain he was mechanically minded.
He spent 11 years in the Air Force, starting off at Point Cook with postings at East Sale, Wagga, Japan and eventually Korea.
Hoping to become a pilot, his farming aptitude made him a natural for transportation and his mechanical skills continue to this day with his love of steam engines and model trains.
Full steam ahead
A member of the Lake Hume Model Engineers, Charlie has built some impressive replicas of trains that you can ride upon.
Replicas they might be, but these are real steam engines, burning fuel and pushing pistons with the pressure of actual steam.
Unlike some modern replicas, purchased as kits online; these engines are almost entirely fabricated manually, using traditional methods of lathing, welding, and riveting.
Charlie's sharp mind and expert hands delicately turn metal in his workshop to produce these working examples of true "engineering".
For a man born in the nascent days of radio, and growing up before the introduction of television, he has not eschewed some mod cons in his trains.
"Yes, that's a camera on there," Charlie says.
"It's too hard to reach around and keep looking at the water level, so I put this little camera here and you can see on the screen at the front what's going on."
Charlie's fabrication efforts would be impressive by a person of any age, and his work over the years has undoubtedly inspired many local children to become makers, builders and engineers.
"He just won't stop building and doing what he loves."
'Don't get too worried'
Charlie will once again be participating in the Albury Anzac Day parade under the Korean War banner.
"My primary school teacher, in a one-teacher school over near Ganmain, was a World War I digger," Charlie says.
"He drummed into us what it meant and the sacrifice they made, and I lost friends in Korea."
Charlie loves his family, his garden and his model trains.
Ever the optimist, he ends our interview with the main thing he has learnt in life.
You will be able to find Charlie among the crowd on Anzac Day in Albury.
He is the one whose gentle and kind smile also shines with resilience.
