Wings of Change: The inside story of Australia's first female Green Beret Commando and her fight for change

By Robyn Fellowes

Robyn's story is one of resilience, overcoming adversity, empowering others and driving positive change. She tells of a childhood dogged by domestic violence; a promising athletics career; 35 years as a professional soldier who helped vulnerable women and children in war zones. Her determination and self-belief saw her complete the gruelling Com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robyn Fellowes
• Release date: Dec 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9780645606393

Robyn Fellowes

Robyn Fellowes was born and raised on a farm near Toowoomba on the Darling Downs, Queensland. As a young woman, she had a very promising athletic career but decided to join the Army instead of becoming a professional athlete. Robyn served in the Army for over 35 years, as a Regular and Reserve member, in training and operational planning roles. She deployed to Bougainville in 1998 as a Patrol Commander. In 1999 she was the first woman in the Australian Defence Force to qualify for the Commando Green Beret. She proved that women are capable of performing all combat-related roles - that they have the same mental and physical resilience, and self-belief as the men. Sadly, other women did not have the opportunity to attempt selection again until combat jobs were finally open to women in the Australian Defence Force in 2014. In 2002 Robyn deployed to East Timor as part of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor and again in 2006 in Iraq - in senior communication roles. In 2015 Robyn deployed to Afghanistan as the Senior Lessons Learnt Staff Officer in the Afghanistan Assessment Group. She worked closely with the Gender Advisors, a new military capability, to learn how they planned to conduct their role, given the constraints and cultural beliefs surrounding Afghan women in their Army and Police. On her return, Robyn was seconded to Canberra to help set up the operational Gender Advisor capability for the Australian Defence Force. The job not only required qualified operational planners but also people who had a humanitarian bent. Robyn had the desire to make the world a better place for men, women, boys and girls. Robyn deployed to South Sudan in 2018 as the Military Gender Advisor to the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. She focussed on the empowerment of women in the Security Forces. Back in Australia, Robyn has spent the last three years working in Headquarters 1st Division focused on planning operations, actions and activities in the South-West Pacific. Robyn took a sabbatical in January 2022 to write a book about her story of overcoming adversity, helping vulnerable people and driving positive change.

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1 – THE NEED FOR CHANGE

Be the change you wish to see in the world – Mahatma Gandhi

My story begins and ends living in Ravensbourne, a picturesque part of Australia, a beautiful, lush and serene rainforest region about 40 kilometres north of Toowoomba on the edge of the Great Dividing Range, in glorious Queensland. Ravensbourne is currently my home – an area surrounded by beautiful trees, towering tallowwoods and blue gums full of bird life. Pretty-face wallabies, dingos and deer roam everywhere. It is very close to where I had the life-changing epiphany that would send me along a new path in my career as an agent of change.

I was driving home to Ravensbourne late one night from Toowoomba. I was exhausted from a long day of running my business. While driving up a hill in Geham, north of Highfields, near the top of the hill, I saw a huge grey gum tree on the left-hand side of the road. It was well known to locals as many young people had ‘accidentally’ driven into that tree over the years and most had died from their injuries. There were often fresh flowers placed at the base of the tree as a gesture of mourning for the many lives lost. One vibrant young man who I knew quite well was critically injured after driving into the tree and had to reside in a nursing home due to the brain damage he had sustained.

It was while contemplating his fate that my thoughts began to wander… and I started thinking… maybe his ‘accident’ wasn’t an accident after all. Maybe none of them were. Maybe people had been feeling exactly the way I was feeling right now – disconnected, stressed and terribly tired. My body ached all over. I was living in chronic pain. In that moment, I just wanted all the pain and stress to go away. I kept thinking – I can fix all this right now. I can make the pain go away. Almost subconsciously, but with the same determination that I had pursued everything in my life, my left hand started to apply pressure to the steering wheel, turning my Captiva towards the ‘Death Tree’.

I increased the pressure on the accelerator, speeding up, my high beam headlights clearly lighting up the massive white trunk. I was nearly off the road now, both hands clenched on the steering wheel to stay on my target, the Tree of Death. I felt ready to meet my fate and submit to the desire for all my pain to go away. Then, just as suddenly as the dark thoughts had overcome me, they lifted. With only a microsecond to spare, I suddenly veered away from the tree and back onto the road, and in doing so, saved my own life. WTF just happened? Now I just wanted to get home.

I had never thought for one moment that I was a person who would ever contemplate committing suicide, but with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps my ‘tree’ epiphany is not so surprising. It woke me up to my own need to change. I had recently left the full-time Army after 22 years of service and, like many veterans, felt quite distanced from the people and organisation that had become my family and home away from home. A military career was all I had known in my adult working life. The camaraderie of the Army was gone – the mateship, the teamwork, the feeling part of something bigger than myself. I was no longer a member of the ‘green machine’.

I also think it was fair to say that I had experienced some extreme challenges and life-changing circumstances throughout my life leading up to my moment at the tree. While in the army, I was fortunate to be one of only three women able to pass the physically and mentally gruelling Commando Selection course. I went on to be the first female to complete the suite of Commando Special Forces Training courses and earn the coveted Green Beret. This was in 1999, at a time when Australian women were banned from most combat roles – occupations that were exclusively the domain of men. Many men (and arguably some women) certainly did not want women entering these forbidden bastions of masculinity. Entering an all-male domain and somehow managing to pass one of the world’s most arduous courses, which the majority of men ultimately fail, wasn’t easy. However, it proved to me what women - myself included – can achieve, given the motivation and the opportunity.

Prior to this, I had also managed to pass Army officer training at the Royal Military College Duntroon, another challenging course, whilst suffering an undiagnosed broken ankle – I walk with a limp to this day. As well as the physical challenges of Army service, I saw and experienced things during my multiple military tours of duty that would linger in my psyche, long after the tour had ended.

I had also survived a traumatic childhood defined by a violent father who physically and mentally abused our family over a period of many years. Perhaps I was motivated by my need for my violent father’s approval and desire to bring peace to our home. Perhaps fuelled by my natural athletic prowess and innate competitiveness, I had also successfully competed in the upper echelons of athletics. This could have been my professional career if I had made different choices.

I was and remain physically and mentally tough, but on that day on the road, it had all become too much. For a very brief moment I no longer wanted to be here. I’ll never really know exactly why, at that particular moment, I felt the need to end my own life or why I somehow managed not to!

What I do know is that this was one of many ‘slidng door’ moments which have shaped the woman and agent of change that I have become. My story is one of overcoming adversity, helping others and driving positive change. I’ve been called many things in my life – ‘Amazon Woman’, ‘GI Jane’, ‘Trail Blazer’ – but I’ve never really considered myself to be any of these things. Other terms used to describe me resonate more deeply: role model, mentor, friend, mate, sister and aunty.

It is my desire to make the world a better place which has inspired me to finally write this book, after many years of pleading by my friends and colleagues. My hope is that readers of this book feel encouraged to overcome whatever adversity or hurdles they may be facing. This may be escaping a violent relationship or home, managing acute physical and psychological pain, coping with unwelcome change, entering a sphere almost entirely dominated by men, or dominated by others who differ from themselves in another significant way.

I hope those contemplating ending their lives, particularly veterans, consider that those moments of acute darkness are never an enduring state. There is always, always hope of a brighter future, even in your darkest hour. Things do change!

This book is inspired by my mother, who in her own quiet and determined way, faced extreme adversity and survived. This threat came from within her own home, which should have been a safe haven from the outside world. Despite this she was a tower of strength, mentally and spiritually. She lifted herself above her circumstances and showed my sisters and me that we could be whoever we wanted to be. She taught me that people’s past does not define them. She gave me the desire to change things that weren’t right – to help people who could not help themselves, people like my Mum. She inspired me to be the best person I can be and the best agent of change I can be.

After my father passed away, my mother finally found peace, if only for the last two years of her life. I only wish that this peaceful period had lasted longer. This book is dedicated to her. I love you, Mum.

2 – SHAPED FOR CHANGE

Throughout my childhood I saw my mother suffer. Her experiences – a new life in a new country, speaking a new language and immensely challenged by my father’s violent actions – all shaped the woman I became. She was vulnerable and needed someone to stand up and protect her. As a child I was unable to do this, but it fuelled my desire to stand up for people who cannot protect themselves.

My mother, Helene, was born in Nikolajewka, Bessarabia, Russia in 1939, prior to the start of the Second World War. Bessarabia is now divided between modern-day Moldova and Ukraine. My mother’s family was one of many German communities that were allowed to prosper under Catherine the Great’s Russian Colonisation Policy. Bessarabia Germans lived there for five or six generations. My mother said to me, ‘Russia wanted the Germans there because we were hardworking.’

The German colonists’ prosperity was based on many things. They had a Christian faith, were compassionate and hardworking and held virtues such as honesty, humility and thrift. They thrived away from the oppression and hunger crisis being experienced in their homeland. There have continued to be historic and cultural links between the citizens of Moldova and Ukraine and the descendants of the German settlers, like my mother.

In the 1940s when the Russian Red Army forces invaded Bessarabia and then Germany occupied Poland, my mother’s family had to flee at very short notice. German soldiers were blowing up the bridges behind them as they tried to slow the Russian advance and protect these refugees. Mum, the second youngest of ten siblings, remembers throwing a tantrum, as she had to leave her doll behind in Poland. She was blissfully unaware that her family had been forced to move with only two hours’ notice, to stay ahead of the advancing Russian Army. They needed to get back to the safety of Germany. The Russian Army back then, like today, was not known for its humanitarian regard – rather the opposite. Fleeing was the correct approach if you did not want to end up dead or a prisoner in Siberia!

Mum, (sitting on front of carriage) and her family. Her older brothers had been sent to the Russian Front.

Mum’s three older brothers, my uncles who were only young men, were killed in this dreadful war as they fought on the Russian Front. One was Luftwaffe (Air Force), one was a Panzer (Tank) driver and one was a Panzer Grenadier (Motorised Infantry). After the war Mum’s mother, my Oma, was told by the local villagers she should get over losing three sons in the war. Oma promptly retorted, ‘Well how about I