By Mikayla van Loon
As someone who served in peacekeeping missions in the Solomon Islands and only exited the armed forces six years ago, Veterans For Fishing (VFF) founder Chris McAleer knows all too well the challenges that can come from transitioning to civilian life.
Invited back to join his former brigade, the 4th/19th Prince of Wales Light Horse, in Sale for a training exercise on Saturday 3 May, Chris said he was both excited and nervous to return to the army environment.
But most importantly, he and fellow ex-serviceman David, were there to pass on a message of support, family and friendship to the men and women currently serving in the unit.
“Even though they’re still currently serving, they’re still veterans, and they’re still part of the family,” Chris said.
The foundations of VFF were built by many of the past serving members of 4th/19th joining in the early days, so the connection between the two entities is strong.
As a predominantly armoured reconnaissance based contingent, Chris said the unit were interested in running some water based training.
“They asked if we could help them out, because we’ve got the boats. They wanted to observe some boats on the water and put their soldiers’ skills to the task of observing boats on the water and what they’re doing,” he said.
After the exercise, Chris was given the opportunity to speak with the members about VFF, what they do, events and how they help ex serving and current serving members.
“If they feel like they’re struggling at all, we can be a support base, they’re still part of the family, so to speak,” he said.
“Once you’re in the defence force, it is really a close knit family, and then when you leave that, you really do feel like somebody’s just torn something from you.”
With a mission to support all service personnel, whether veterans, current serving members or their families, Chris said proactive chats like this one were important to ensure soldiers can find the support and community they need throughout any stage of their service.
“It lets them know straight away that there are ex service organisations out there that they can not only reach out to when they get out, if they feel that they need to, but they can, at the moment too, that they can still get hold of us and still be a part of what we do,” he said.
“Not every ex service person has any issues. The majority are all fine, and off they go into the world but to then also show those people that we’ve created a little bit of a community here with like minded people, with a bit of an activity thrown in.”
As defence personnel, Chris said competitiveness was typically woven into their nature, that’s why the VFF model works so well.
“We like to compete. We like to be on edge and have a mission,” Chris said.
Post chat and upon arriving back home, Chris said he opened up the VFF social media accounts to find at least 40 new likes and some encouraging messages.
“Lots saying, ‘Hey, this looks great. I’m going to have to come to your next family day’ and stuff like that.
“It’d be really good to see, because I know the older diggers get a kick out of seeing the young blokes and ladies turn up and they chat to them about what they did and what’s different and how it’s new.”
After the visit to Sale, Chris said there was hope VFF could follow this direction more by going to speak with other units and sharing the networks of support with current serving members.
As VFF continues to grow and expand, reaching more people and deepening connections, new offerings have come about like a veterans retreat and a sponsored fishing competition at Jerusalem Creek in October.
Now as a fully independent, registered not for profit organisation, VFF has plans to set up offshoots in Western Australia, Far North Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia.
“We’ve had plenty of people contacting us saying ‘we’d like to do exactly what you’re doing, but in our state’. So we will be expanding Australia wide very soon.”
Veterans For Fishing run regular fishing days, family events and attend competitions. To find out more, visit the facebook page.
