TOWNSVILLE soldiers will swap training in tough Australian bushland for dense jungle during a three-month training exercise in Malaysia.

A total of 121 troops from the 1st Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment’s Charlie Company along with other members of 3rd Brigade supporting units, left Townsville for the South-East Asian nation on Tuesday.

The deployment forms part of the latest Rifle Company Butterworth Rotation, with Australian Army rifle companies participating in the rotation for the past 30 years.

Officer Commanding Rifle Company Butterworth Rotation 121, Major Todd O’Callaghan, said it was the first time serving overseas for many members of the company.

Maj O’Callaghan said the training mission would involve jungle exercises, urban warfare and live fire training.

“We will be utilising our time over the deployment to train our soldiers on different capabilities that we are limited to in Australia, because if an Army doesn’t advance, it will soon be defeated by one that does,” he said.

“Our mission is always to prepare and we are going over there with the intent of preparing for that mission.

“We are very keen to modernise ourselves in terms of training techniques.

“We’ll be going over there and working with the same team for three months with no distractions of any other field deployments or taskings.”

Maj O’Callaghan said there would be opportunities for interoperability and both countries’ militaries to learn from each other and work for each other. “Nothing they are doing there is overly new,” he said.

“But coming from combat in Afghanistan which has an urban environment and Townsville which has bush with open rolling areas, we are keen to get quite competent at applying our skills in a jungle environment.”