By CASEY NEILL
“THEY’VE looked after me. I can look after them.”
That’s Liz Pilkington-Brown’s attitude to working at the Noble Park RSL welfare office.
“The veteran community, it becomes your family,” she said.
“It looks after you, it tries to protect you where it can.”
She was married to Vietnam Veteran Rudolf Brown, who died seven years ago.
“They really supported me when Rudy died,” she said.
And the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) has supported her two daughters, now aged 27 and 30, with their studies.
“Four-and-a-half years ago I decided I wanted to give back to the community,” Mrs Pilkington-Brown said.
“A lot of people take out. I always felt that there was a need to give back.
“Anyone who’s served, to me, deserves our respect.”
She took courses in welfare and social work, pensions and advocacy work and volunteers as a pension officer.
Mrs Pilkington-Brown said the legislation veterans had to deal with was “very draconian”.
“You’ve got someone who’s not well, and you’re sitting there explaining to them ‘no you can’t do this, no you can’t do that’,” she said.
“And we’re not legal advisors or anything like that.
“We give you all the information and you, as the veteran, you have to filter it through and make choices.
“But the problem is the veteran is not well.
“You’re trying to guide them to the best medical people who can assist them.”
Mrs Pilkington-Brown has no military experience.
“I have never volunteered or served for Australia,” she said.
“My experience is from my family’s background, my father’s background, my father-in-law’s background – what I’ve learnt.
“And that’s what I offer them.”
Her father was in the Merchant Navy in England.
“So he came in at the tail end of the war. And so lot of those destroyers and especially the Merchant Navy, they were unarmed,” she said.
“They got attacked so much. So the fact that he made it through was pretty amazing.”
Her first husband’s father is still alive.
“He’s 96-and-a-half, and he fought in New Guinea and Bougainville, and I think he’s just wonderful,” she said.
“To me, he has the humility of a soldier that you expect to see.
“Our family’s history since they came to Australia in 1890 has always served in the military at one stage or another.
“I admire the tenacity of that and my husband’s grandfather. He came to Australia in 1896.
“In the June of 1915, he became naturalised and in the July he applied for the army.
“To me, that symbolises the respect he had for Australia as his new country, and he enlisted and he was in France for four years. I just think it’s a remarkable story.”
Her husband Rudy went to Vietnam in 1967 – as a reo, or reinforcement.
“He was what they call a ‘reg’ (a regular army soldier),” she said.
He served with 7RAR, and when they rotated home, he served the rest of his time out with 1RAR.
“I met my husband 10 years after Vietnam,” she said.
“He just never settled down. He struggled to get jobs.
“There’s no other way to describe it, he was just ill. Then things started getting diagnosed.
“He had diabetes and he had heart disease and he had this …
“He had a severe lot of emotional issues.”
Mrs Pilkington-Brown spoke about Rudy’s mental health reluctantly.
“Whenever people talk about people like that and they talk about mental illness, people build up a picture of always a bad person,” she said.
“I don’t want him portrayed as a bad person.”
Four years ago, she married another Vietnam Veteran, John Pilkington. She joked she was “a glutton for punishment”.
“You already know a little bit of what you’re taking on board,” she said.
Today, Mrs Pilkington-Brown’s 30-year-old daughter and son-in-law are in the armed forces.
“I know a lot of anti-war people talk about war at Anzac Day,” she said.
“But to me it’s got nothing to do with war actually.
“It’s honouring the servicemen and women that are in the current and past generations and that are long gone.
“It’s honouring their service and recognising what they’ve given and what they’ve done.”
She feels that the “modern veteran” is hard for society to understand.
“The younger veteran today is very articulate, and very well-educated. Very tech-savvy. Their world is Facebook, Twitter … ” she said.
“They are not face to face like Vietnam Veterans, or previous veterans.
“So we have to get into that world and make them aware that it is a fantastic world they’re using, but unfortunately the systems that they need to get past the gatekeeper, they need to come and see us.
“They need to have that one on one still.”
Call Lifeline on 13 11 14 for crisis and depression support.
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SIDEBAR/BREAKOUT
NOBLE Park RSL’s welfare office has a new home.
Sub-branch president John Meehan said the Robert Street property had been home to World War II veteran Bob Madden.
“He was part of our RSL as well, and we helped him with a lot of his veteran affairs pension issues,” he said.
“After Bob passed away his son and daughter-in-law offered us to use this place as our welfare and pension office.”
It’s within walking distance of the RSL on Heatherton Road, but “gives us a little bit of separation”.
“It has given us extra space, and our own identity around here. And the veterans don’t have any problems in coming around and seeing us here,” he said.
The volunteers see veterans, spouses and children from World War II through to today’s conflicts and peacekeeping tours.
“We have specialists,” Mr Meehan said.
“We assist veterans and their families to obtain their rightful pensions.
“If they go by themselves, they’ll get shot down, like a lawyer defending himself in court.”
They also lend a ear.
“They find it very difficult to speak to their families,” Mr Meehan said.
“They know that we’re veterans. We’ve witnessed a lot of the same sort of stuff.
“They really appreciate that, knowing they can open up a bit.
“The army, navy and air force teach you, when you’re going through training, to just accept what’s going on to get the job done.
“But when you get out, they leave that sort of stuff in you still.”
