Amateur photography is one of the most popular hobbies among the Australian troops serving with ...

Amateur photography is one of the most popular hobbies among the Australian troops serving with the United Nations (UN) forces in Korea. Soldiers who have never handled a camera in their lives before are developing into keen photographers, and the Korean countryside, with its towering hills, its terraced paddy fields, its mud-walled, straw-thatched villages and its oxen-powered transport, is providing the soldiers with 'toxon' (the Japanese 'takusan' for 'plenty of') subjects. In regimental gift shops in Korea, the troops can buy top-line Japanese, German and British cameras and accessories for a mere fraction of the Australian price. Every second soldier has a camera and some have two or three. To cater for the photographers, the 1st Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR), has built and equipped a darkroom, and formed a camera club. The club gives the troops the opportunity of comparing their work and benefitting from each other's experience. One of the keenest members of the camera club is 25178 Private (Pte) J R (John) Longstaff of Warrawong, NSW. Pte Longstaff has been in the army for three years, but his interest in photography began with his arrival in Korea twelve months ago. Here he is mixing developer outside the unit darkroom. (Original British Commonwealth Forces Korea (BCFK) caption).