GUARDIAN
ANGEL OF THE ANIMALS
By Melissa Walsh Photos Yanni
S
he has been a model, a secretary, mother, and traveller. She’s stood with a gun in her face to rescue horses, argued with strong men putting animals in their car boots, and even gone undercover to rescue animals from harm. She’s been bitten, scratched, and given up her home as a sanctuary to wildlife and continues to donate her time and money to rescue and rehabilitate her beloved animals. Brenda Marmion has devoted her life to saving animals and, at 74, has no intention of ever stopping. The Rye woman has been the guardian angel of animals since she rescued her first mouse from the jaws of a cat as a young child, and it has remained her calling to this day. “When I was a little girl I would rescue mice and birds from the cat and wrap them in dad’s handkerchief to look after them. It is what I was born to do. Those were the days when we didn’t know
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22 | PENINSULA
April 2017
that cats were not allowed outside as they would harm the wildlife,” said Brenda from her Rye home, where we sit surrounded by cages of birds, her beloved dog, and a baby possum she is nursing back to health. Brenda came to Australia from England in 1960 and quickly her homesickness set in. The only way to alleviate it was with animals. “I got my first horse at Christmas that year, and within a few months I decided to start rescuing horses. I was only 17 at this point but worked as a secretary in Dandenong. I would go to the Dandenong market in my 45-minute lunch break to check that the horses being put through were okay for sale. I found one that was so badly hurt I called the RSPCA. After that someone said to me "You should go to the Tuesday market, which is even worse. That’s the market after the farmers buy all the sheep and cattle and lambs and you should see what goes on there.”