'You just get the shakes inside': Navy veteran recognised for sea rescues

He spent six years in the Navy which took him to Vietnam during the war but it's his voluntary work at sea with the Port Fairy Marine Rescue Service that earnt him an Emergency Services Medal in this year's King's Birthday honours.

Unit members say Mr Bedwell has been instrumental in saving many mariners that have found themselves in need of rescue.

To keep the unit operational over the past decade, he has made himself available at any time to command the rescue vessel.

"It's 24-hour, seven days a week call-outs but we haven't had many this year actually which is good," he said.

Mr Bedwell has stepped up into leadership positions - serving as president and vice-president - and for the past four years has been the training officer.

He joined the rescue service just after the unit got its first boat which the community had fund-raised to get more than a decade ago.

Until then, the task of ocean rescues had fallen to a charter boat owner who would get the call to go out and tow in boats that had broken down, Mr Bedwell said.

While the community funded the first boat, the government stepped in in recent years to buy them a new bigger boat.

The unit has about 15 members, he said, but only about 10 of them active and they are in desperate need of more. "We find it hard to get members," he said.

Mr Bedwell said when the service first started they were doing about five rescues a month. "Blokes in old boats running out of petrol," he said. "We did two before Christmas but it's calmed down now," he said.

Mr Bedwell has been involved in many rescues over the years - not all of them with a happy ending.

"But the ones that stand out in your mind are those that go out on the boat and haven't got a clue," he said.

He recalls the time a first-time boat owner took his week-old vessel out to sea only to find he couldn't get his engine restarted.

With no idea of exactly where he was, the mariner directed the crew to the coast west of Port Fairy where they spent three or four hours until nightfall searching for him.

They ended up finding him off Port Fairy in the opposite direction by getting the stranded man to turn on the torch of his near-flat phone which they were lucky enough to spot in the dark.

Mr Bedwell has also been a lifeguard, and is still actively involved at the community pool working in its reception.

Having grown up in Port Fairy, he joined the Navy when he was 16 in July 1962.

"Not long after that they had the Cuban (Missile) Crisis. We got put on buses and taken down to Fremantle wharf and helped load ammunition onto a frigate," he said.

"We all thought: 'what are we doing? Are we going to war or something?'"

Mr Bedwell was aboard the HMAS Sydney when a load of troops were shipped to Malaysia.

He was later transferred to the HMAS Duchess, which was part of the destroyer escort for the HMAS Sydney taking troops to Vietnam.

While he wasn't on the ground during the Vietnam war, he said you could see what was going on.

"All these helicopters and B-52s in the distance. We were on the gun line off North Vietnam shelling," he said

"Something happened one day, and later you start thinking about it. You start thinking: 'who are we shelling?'

"When you're a kid you don't think."

But years later that reality hits home.

"It actually makes me nervous to talk about," a visibly shaken Mr Bedwell said.

"I'm 78 and that was 60 years ago. It's upsetting. It stays with you for the rest of your life. You just get the shakes inside."

With fears of Communism spread south in Asia towards Australian shores, Mr Bedwell only years later learnt about what he had been a part of when he read about it in the newspaper at work decades later.

"The Americans did a lot of covert working Indonesia, and we were sort of tied up as part of that," he said.

"This had been kept on the secret list for 30 years. I was actually there. Didn't know why I was there. You find out these things 30 years later that that was what was going on."

"You were only a kid - 17, 18 - you just did what you were told, you didn't know why you were doing it."