Modelling mindfulness: How a neglected gift created something special at Melton RSL
When Steve Cook was a boy, his father told him that every male member of his family had been in the armed forces since William the Conqueror.
With a family legacy dating back almost a thousand years it is not to be wondered that he had a deep fascination for all things military, his bedroom walls covered with pictures of tanks and ships where other kids had pop stars.
He never enjoyed school life and was impatient to get into the military. He was thrilled to find out he could join the Navy at only 15 years of age at the Junior Recruit Training Establishment at HMAS Leeuwin in Western Australia.
He joined in 1983, only a year before the base was shut down, and was quickly introduced to the heavy drinking culture in the Navy. He can remember being only 17 years old and going into a pub where the barmaid challenged his age. His fellow sailors told the barmaid “If he is old enough to die for his country, he is old enough to drink” and he was served.
It was only a taste of what was to come. Weeks later he was amongst the notorious nightlife of Boogie Street Singapore and Manila in the Philippines. It was a major shift from his quiet childhood in Geelong. He soon discovered drinking was the Navy way of coping with the lifestyle, and that method of coping followed him as he moved away from the Navy and into the police force in civilian life after ten years of service.
“When I got out of the Navy there was no support at all to adjust to civilian life. I was completely lost; the Navy just cut the cord. If it hadn’t been for my parents, I don’t know what would have happened to me.”
He initially joined the RSL but found the culture in the time was not welcoming of service members who had not been to an active war zone.
“There were still Second World War veterans there at the time,” Steve said. “They didn’t really think we were real veterans.”
The police force did provide the pathway and career that he was looking for but in the early days he moved from station to station and had trouble settling down. But life in the police force comes with its own trauma and combined with the residual effects of ten years in the Navy and a reliance on alcohol led to him suffering a breakdown in 2008.
He was diagnosed with PTSD. This manifest itself in his mind that could not be shut down, his head racing hours after clocking off work.
“At the time the police force was not set up to help people with PTSD,” Steve. “I tried medication and therapy but found that drinking was the only way I could get my mind to turn off at the end of the day.”
As his mental and physical health collapsed Steve tried medication, therapy and mindfulness but found nothing could shut his mind off and give him peace. His step-daughters had bought him a model frigate set as a present several years earlier but he had stashed it away in the garage.
“One day I thought I must try something other than drinking to stop my mind racing. So, I opened up the kit and found I disappeared in it almost straight away. I could spend hours just focusing on the model and it shut my mind down.”
The effect it had on Steve was transformative. He cut out drinking almost entirely, started exercising regularly and lost 25 kilos. Any time he needed to switch off and relax his mind he would work on the models and achieve the mindfulness he could not find through therapy or medication.
Now a member of the Melton RSL Sub-Branch, Steve raised it with the committee as something that might help other veterans struggling with their mental health. He put together a plan for model making to be part of the Sub-Branch’s RSL Active program.
“I spoke to Susie at Andrews Hobbies in Ravenhall and told them about our plans for the model making group. She offered to sell us starter kits at a reduced rate to get the group going. We used money from our fundraising with the poppy appeal to buy the kits for the members.”
The first group started with about five veterans with no clear direction of how it would grow or if the models would be displayed.
“Susie from Andrew Hobbies put us in touch with Michael Bradshaw who is a professional model maker and we asked if he would be able to help us with the models,” Steve Cook said. “He agreed to run workshops for us free of charge.”
Michael Bradshaw developed a plan for monthly workshops with the veterans, taking them step by step through the process of model making from the basics to detailed dioramas.
“I love helping the veterans with the model making,” Michael Bradshaw said. “I understand how therapeutic making the models is for them and it is a real privilege to be able to help these veterans.”
There are now twenty members of the model-making group which is nearly at capacity.
“It has grown so much we are running out of room,” Steve Cook said. “We don’t have dedicated club rooms at Melton RSL so we are going to have to find somewhere bigger so that we can continue to expand the program it has become so popular.”
Steve Cook is currently working on a diorama of the HMAS Hobart, the Destroyer he served on with the Royal Australian Navy in the early 1990s. Another group member is working on a model of the Bismark complete with a rotating turret.
The models and dioramas will go on display at Melton Library from early November as part of Remembrance Day commemorations and run until the end of the year.
