Our People in NSW
Charmaine Benfield - Inverell Soldier in Sumatra Rescue Operation
Humanitarian missions depend on people like Inverell’s Charmaine Benfield to get people, equipment and provisions to where they are needed.
Now a Captain in the Army, Charmaine has specialised as a logistics officer and she’s working in Padang as a part of the Australian response to the earthquake that struck the city on September 30.
Charmaine’s job is co-ordinating the smooth flow of stores, equipment and transport to support the troops on the ground. Without her, the soldiers can’t operate effectively.
The job in Padang is more challenging than back home with stores from Australia needing to be flown in or brought by ship.
“We are buying a lot of general items from local industry but that in itself requires careful planning,” Charmaine said. “Co-ordinating stores for all the people in the area takes a lot of work but we have a good team here so it’s working well,”
“In a headquarters like this here in Padang, we are also involved in the planning and provide technical advice to the commanders to keep the mission going.”
Growing up on a bee farm in Inverell in northern NSW, Charmaine enjoyed life on the family’s twenty-acre property with her parents John and Nolene, and sister Lauren.
As a member of the Warialda Pony Club she indulged her passion for horse riding, having several horses of her own to ride around the family property.
After finishing at MacIntyre High School, Charmaine joined the Army in 1998 and attended the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) where she completed a bachelor of arts degree, majoring in East Asian and military history, then officer training at the Royal Military College, Duntroon.
It was while at Duntroon that she met her husband, Phillip Baldoni, who is also a logistics Captain. So far their careers have followed each other, but next year they will be posted apart.
“Philip will be in Darwin but I’m in Canberra so we will be apart for the first time since we met,” she said.
“He has spent the first half of the year in Iraq and then I went to Rockhampton for a week after he got home. I was then sent here to Sumatra, so we haven’t seen much of each other lately. My friends and family think it’s a bit weird but we knew that was the life we were getting into.”
These days Charmaine is normally based at Enoggera in Brisbane. “This is the closest I have been posted to my family so my Mum likes to visit fairly often,” she said. “In fact, my parents use it as an excuse for a holiday.”
Operation Padang Assist is the ADF response to the earthquake that hit west Sumatra on September 30th. The ADF is working in conjunction with AusAID and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to provide appropriate aid where it will help to the people of Padang.