On my "scrub ride" at BFTS I was a bit of a mess, when we got back I knew I had failed. I spent a bit longer putting the aircraft away, walked around it slowly (it was the last time I ever went out on the flight line), took a lingering look around and then did the slow walk to the debrief.
The testing officer asked me to shut the door, invited me to sit, then asked, "So how do you think that went?". I said, "Frankly, Sir, that was embarrassing, and I wouldn't pass me." He seemed somewhat relieved that he didn't have to break it to me.
I had been given plenty of opportunities to get it right, and yes it was near the end of the course, but it was clear that it just wasn't working. I made the mistakes. Me. No blame on instructors, or the system, just me.
To speak to some of the other comments:
Instructors are fairly well monitored and complaints against them are taken seriously. Students have to read and sign the "hate sheets", so the student shouldn't be surprised at all if their performance is noticeably poor. Instructors have bad days too, and sometimes unfair things happen, but the higher-ups these days seem to be a bit more aware of that and will take positive action. I've seen at least one case personally where a potential scrubbing was overturned by an outbreak of sanity behind closed doors. The student went on to finish BFTS and is now at Oakey transitioning to a very nice helicopter.
If the whole course is good enough, the whole course will get through. If they all suck, the "system" will not hesitate to scrub them all. Defence is trying desperately to feed pilots in at the top of the funnel while they pour out the other end into civvie jobs or just out, so if anything they would be trying to keep more students in the training. Having said that, let me quote the CO:
"I can take any idiot off the street and teach him to fly, given enough time and money, but I don't want any idiot, I want pilots that get it right the first time, every time. I'll put up with you making one mistake. Under special circumstances I'll even put up with two. But if you need more than that to succeed as a military pilot, then you are not the pilot the military is looking for."
I didn't appeal my Notice To Show Cause, I just quietly packed my things and did my best to get on with my life. There will always be the "what if" moments, and I hope the crushing sense of failure dims more as time goes by, but life goes on, the bills have to be paid, so you do what you have to do.
My advice to the original poster is ... at 28, if you are relatively debt free, get out, buy a swag, do whatever you need to do legally to get your solo hours up (you'll need about 70 command nav hours to get your 200 hour CPL), then keep going from there. Don't "plan on" flying a bit here an there, then go and get settled into a job or a place so long that you look back at 38 and wonder what happened to the last ten years of your life.
And don't get any girls pregnant.