Bronwen Campbell was named the inaugural Dunoon Woman of the Year earlier this year for her contribution to the local community. However, the focus of her primary occupation as a leading expert in commercial diver training has her working both nationally and internationally, showing that it is possible to think and act both locally and globally.

I'm currently employed almost full time with Phoenix International (Australia) who have won the Commonwealth Government contract to provide submarine rescue services to the Navy. They're a Perth based company so I work remotely most of the time.

Phoenix employed me even though I live on the opposite side of the country because of my specialist expertise in training in the diving and hyperbaric industries. It's an interesting role as training coordinator for submarine rescue systems. My job is to analyse all the roles in the team and develop qualifications and training systems to make sure that all the people are competent and ready to run a full submarine rescue at literally a moment’s notice.

When you rescue people from a submarine, you need to mobilise an entire team of people and a huge amount of equipment to the site where the submarine has sunk. Then you take a remotely operated manned vehicle down and mate it to the submarine, rescue the people inside then bring them to the surface and if necessary, treat them in a hyperbaric chamber. It's a major exercise and involves a large team all with very different skills.

Probably the most high-profile recent submarine rescue attempt was the one in Argentina involving Phoenix International, the parent company of Phoenix International (Australia).

The reason I'm working for them from Dunoon, rather than moving to Perth, is because I also work locally for the Australian Diver Accreditation Scheme (called ADAS for short) and assist with managing our macadamia farm. And of course, who would want to move away from our beautiful region!

Bronwen Campbell and Rob Gatt at a charity fundraiser with the Dunoon United FC. PHOTO: Supplied.

I originally qualified as a process engineer in New Zealand and came to Australia in 1986 to work in the oil and gas industry. In 2000, my husband Rob Gatt - who was a police search and rescue diver - was approached to develop nationally recognised qualifications for ADAS, who manage certification for commercial divers in Australia and New Zealand. Because of my background which involved engineering construction, training and diving experience, it made sense to work together. We developed all the qualifications for commercial divers in Australia. We’ve both continued to work with the scheme since then in various capacities.

ADAS was a government body and used to be located in Canberra, but the person who was running it managed to convince the Department at the time that he would be able to run it from his beautiful farm in Dunoon, so that's how I was introduced to the local community. 

We visited Dunoon and, as many of us do, fell in love with the place and from then on worked towards trying to move the family up here. We bought a macadamia farm here in 2003 and continued to work in Melbourne for quite some time but eventually managed to move up here in 2009 with full time work with ADAS.

Rob and I now run the Australian Diver Accreditation Scheme, essentially job sharing, although Rob is officially the Executive Director. It's not very often you can work in a professional field with your husband, and I find it really rewarding. 

Not many people know that the national certification body for all commercial divers is running out of the relatively small village of Dunoon. So that's always good fun when people look us up on Google Maps and think we're being run from the middle of a field. 

People often don’t realise that you can live in an area like this and still have those global connections and international influence. It’s easy to think you have be in the big cities, but we have adequate infrastructure and technology to be able do amazing things – of course we could still do with more, such as fast internet and good mobile phone reception.

When we first moved to Dunoon, we were managing a large project which was still Melbourne based, building a dive supervisor training simulator – the first of its kind in the world. I was spending a month in Melbourne and then coming back here for a month or two and then back to Melbourne.

Rob was very involved in the community right from the very start, getting involved in soccer with the Dunoon United Football Club. I wasn't really a sports person and it took me a little longer to get involved in football. I did look for some community involvement and contribution and initially managed the Dunoon Gazette website. I then became editor of the Dunoon Gazette, although it was supposed to be an interim role while they found an editor, as I really didn’t feel that I had the time to do the role well enough, due to all my travel commitments. But it has been more than five years now and here I am, still editor! Being the editor gets me involved with all sorts of different people, the schools, our contributors, advertisers and so on, so that's been fantastic.

However, it wasn't really until I joined the local soccer team that I began to feel much more a part of the community from a social perspective. It’s difficult to fit in my soccer commitments amongst all the travel, but I do my best, particularly because it's good for your health as well. I try and make sure I get back in time for games and schedule my travel around them if I can. And we also need to make time to volunteer, such as helping out at Pink Sports Day for Breast Cancer fundraising and awareness.

When I signed up, I was the oldest player in the football club. I was a little bit unsure whether I could actually manage to play soccer at my age, as I'd never played before, but I met other people through the soccer competitions and so on who were actually older than me and they were really important role models for me to keep going. Every year I would try and find someone older than me to inspire me to keep going. 

I was initially dubious that I could manage another year of soccer with my work this year, but we are working hard as a club to engage the community and particularly to enhance female participation. I figured that it might be good to be a role model both for female participation and for continuing to play sport even as the oldest female member of the club. And without that commitment to a team, I knew I would end up working too hard and start to neglect my own health and wellbeing.

Bronwen Campbell walking the Costa Brava recently. PHOTO: Supplied.

Living in a regional area while working with a team on the other side of the country can be a little bit challenging, despite having fantastic technology to keep in touch with people that you're working with. I think face to face contact is still really valuable so I try to get over there at least every couple of months.

It's critical to have support networks when your work takes you away from home. For example I have a co-editor of the Dunoon Gazette who was able to finish off a few things when I went to Spain recently for work. We have also been lucky to have family and close friends to make sure our children have been looked after when Rob and I have had to go away together. They are adults now, so that has made things much easier.

One of the fantastic things about a community like this is the fact that we are able to build those strong community networks and support networks. I think that's valuable from a whole range of perspectives. For people's general wellbeing, it's good to be surrounded by community that has your back, so to speak, and to enable us to do the things that we do.

We knew from the first day we visited Dunoon that it was a very special place. It took us a long time to make the move, but when we did it was like coming home. We count ourselves as very privileged to be able to live and work in this wonderful community, contribute locally and at the same time maintain our global networks and international influence in our professional lives