While she might not have taken out the top award, being recognised as a finalist for a Prime Minister’s award has Taylah Hutchings beaming with pride.
On November 26, Taylah and her father made the trip to Canberra for the Prime Minister’s National Veteran Employment Awards.
“Just to be recognised as a finalist, was very happy with that,” she said.
On the night, she was shaking hands with all the big names, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, as well as many veterans all vying for the awards.
The Shepparton local was nominated for the Veteran Employee of the Year, one of four finalists, after being nominated by her employer.
“My boss from my job in incident response nominated me,” she said.
“And basically, in his words, it was sort of for bringing like a bit of diversity into the career because most of the guys I was working with were like, 60-year-olds, ex-fires, ex-army, all male.
“So when he hired me, he’s like ‘I would love if you could come in and change the culture’.
“I think I did well on doing that because we all ended up mates, and I opened their minds a little bit.”
Before becoming a situational incident response officer in 2022, Taylah served in the Royal Australian Corps of Transport from 2017 until 2021.
“I joined in 2017 just out of Year 12, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” she said.
“So I joined the army and went in as a truck driver. Did my training at Puckapunyal and then got posted to Brisbane.”
A year and a half in to her time in Brisbane, she was moved to an infantry unit, which led to her working in Afghanistan.
“They needed women to go over there to work with the females,” Taylah said.
“It’s very competitive amongst the girls because I think people don’t realise that like you do want to get deployed when you’re in the army, you train for it.
“So you want to do it, even though it’s maybe a little bit dangerous or risky, but I felt really confident in our training.”
Only four out of the 15 women who applied to the position were accepted, and Taylah was one of them, going to Afghanistan as a ‘guardian angel’ for NATO country members.
She finished up her time with the army in July 2021, and was connected to her employment through the RSL transition program, becoming a situational incident response officer at Ventia Australia in Brisbane in 2022.
“It was a bit tricky starting (that role) as I was back in a male-dominated environment again, so I was sort of faced with that continuous thing of having to prove yourself to become friends and get respect,” Taylah said.
Now back in Shepparton after leaving the job in 2024, she’s ready for her next venture, with the finalist’s award just another notch in what is already a successful career.