I’m ACW Taryn Ovenden, I came from Adelaide. I’m 19 and I joined because I have always liked working on cars and that sort of thing. My Dad use to be in the Defence Force, so it was kind of a family thing to do.
At the moment I’m the only permanent female on course. There’s one that is with us for about 3 weeks and she leaves again. There’s 16 of us all up and it’s very good. You become, they become like an older brother and you look after them and they look after you really well and it’s no problem fitting in. It’s, you just become one of the boys with them.
Some cases you hear about sexual harassment, I don’t really understand how it sort of happens. But the Defence sort of takes control of really quickly. It’s very rare. I’ve never had any case where the guys have tried to like harass me in any way and I don’t see them doing that ever because you become such good mates with them it’s just not likely to happen at all. Mostly I think they’re cases, sort of, when people go on deployment but maybe, it’s very rare.
Going overseas is fairly important just ’cause I want to see the world. Not just be stuck in one little area. I want to be able to see everything before I get older and have kids, family et cetera.
There is a good opportunity for us to be good citizens overseas. We can show people over there; from different countries what Australia is actually like, what people here, what kind of characteristics they uphold. Just to show them how we live and that we’re no threat to them at all.
There’s a lot of teamwork involved in the Defence Force, that’s probably my biggest characteristic I like. We learn to work with all of our teammates and even if you don’t get along with people well just, you work with them and you do it well. And courage as well. You learn to sort of not be so quiet and timid in the classroom, you get out there and speak up and you stand up and be a person.
I think I’ve changed for the better since I’ve been here because we’ve been forced to work as a team from day one and we’ve had it drilled into us the discipline, and it’s, you just grow that way being in here. The recruits, when we’re on recruit training, the 10 weeks there is just all about discipline and team work and your future employment, how you can stuff it up and how you can make it go better for yourself and it’s, it seems hard but you get out of there and you realise that they were just trying to get you into that life style that you’re going to be living for the next 6 or so years, at least.