In Australia, soldiers are fed sandwiches with jam or Vegemite, chili, and tuna pasta, along with cheese, chocolate bars, soft drinks, condensed milk, and sweets.
The Australian army's meal rations came with more sweets compared to others

Tremblay wrote:

In Australia, soldiers are fed sandwiches with jam or Vegemite, chili, and tuna pasta, along with cheese, chocolate bars, soft drinks, condensed milk, and sweets. The Australian army's meal rations came with more sweets compared to others

Yep…that’s about right mate. I didn’t mind the Combat Ration 1 Man (CR1M). I found them filling and provided enough energy for a hectic 24 hour period.

Have a look at this website for all the info on our MRE Rations. As an aside…the yanks loved getting their hands on ours in preference to their issued MRE.

Aussie Army Ration Pack

The most important item in the Rat Pack is the little tool near the bottom in the pic…the FRED - best can opener ever, with a bottle opener and a spoon on the end. I saved everyone of them, and still use them at home over 20 years after I got out of the Army. My wife and daughters love them as well.

I believe the dehy meals have changed them around a bit now...last couple I got ahold of still had either jelly beans or M&Ms in them,same orange raro... tea/coffee/whitener/sugar..no condensed milk unfortunately..couple of gingernut cookies and two dehy meals a main and a breakfast

One of the more important things in the Aussie Ration Pack is the chocolate ration (bar). Two of these chocolate bars constitutes a 24 hour Emergency Ration, said to provide just enough energy for a 24 hour period.

I was never a big supporter of the dehydrated rations. Basically they use up water that you need for hydration. I always practised good water discipline when in the field, and still do. I carried around four litres of water (four water bottles), two on my backpack and two on my basic webbing. The ones on my pack were really only backup for those on my webbing, unless we were in a tropical climate, in which case I’d use them all as needed. Water resupply wasn’t always guaranteed, and it could be days between resups, hence the need for water discipline. I’ve had to share my water on more than one occasion with guys who had little or no water discipline.
So dehydrated meals weren’t big on my list of “wants”. In the right environment though they are nice and a pleasant change from canned meals.

here in NZ water isnt usually an issue...unless too much of it isnt your cuppa tea...and cuppa tea is a very good use of water.

Tea? Nawww...Coffee.

Two Tea Bags and two Coffee Satchels in each Ration Pack, but I didn’t always use them all. The coffee is International Roast and is bloody terrible, but it’s coffee so I put up with it.

Elvis, I’m surprised there wasn’t any condensed milk in the ration pack you had mate…I’d say someone beat you to it and snaffled it on ya. The snacks were good too…I enjoyed them at 3am when sitting on sentry in the machine gun pit because you couldn’t “brew up”.

As good as the hexamine stove is, it put out a fair bit of light, so it was a “no go” at night. I overcome that problem though by carrying a small butane burner (GAZ brand). It was small and light to carry. The down side is, once attached, you can’t remove the butane bottle. But that is ok as the complete stove fits nicely in a water bottle carrier. So long as you gave it a shake and “bled” it off before lighting it started up with a blue flame and was invisible in the bottom of a rifle pit. More than one guy was thankful for a hot brew in the middle of the night when on picquet. The stove I have is the older type on the left in the pic.

Army Ration Packs aren’t always the most palatable, and you didn’t always need the “date roll” (TP) included in the pack. But you were guaranteed to not go hungry, assuming you stuck to the suggested three meals, and you got enough energy for a day of hard work.

now we really getting into outdated territory
cookers..well Ive got heximine cookers..still use the frame with my penny cooker meths stove
used to have similar stove to yours but it was close to 10'' tall so very unstable.
next was a spider....unscrewable disposable bottle with about 12" long rubber hose to a cooking head with wide tripod very low down..could happily place big pot of camp oven on it.
then went back in time and bought a primus white spirits stove,folds up into itself box about 6" square and 4" high
then a titanium cooker about twice the size of your thumb that screws on top of same disposable canisters
and lastly when price dropped a KMART special jetboil knock off.
they all have thier place,and if truth be known I was just as happy with a billy over an open fire suspended on a stick
the ration packs Ive got are new ones civilian issue

I still have a few hexamine stoves, and some hexamine, also have an older Vietnam period Army issue petrol stove (M1950) that uses petrol as the fuel (pic below). Also have a single burner that screws onto a gas bottle and also my two burner gas stove…then of course I have my PIG. I agree about the billy over an open fire though mate…something rather special about a brew made that way. Put a green stick on top of the billy and it seems to impart a flavour to the brew that is amazing.