In East Maitland, Doc Sattler is known as the "go-to man", a stalwart of the local Returned and Services League sub-branch, who does not seek praise, publicity or, perish the thought, a place on a committee. "He's just a bloke who's always willing to put in," says sub-branch treasurer Peter Hedges. "The bloke who does all the odd jobs."
Concreting paths. Trimming the grass round the war graves. Maintaining the crumbling, wooden army hut that has been the home of commemoration, camaraderie and Anzac spirit for RSL members since 1948.
Thanks to unpaid volunteers such as Sattler, the sub-branch is a busy buddy on behalf of its members, whose long-term welfare it supports and whose memory it will sustain, and a focus for the community in which it sits.
Apart from organising the annual Anzac Day commemoration, it throws a big Christmas party, sponsors a swimming team, supports school speech days and magazines, helps local hard-luck cases, whether members or not.
It also works tirelessly to disprove the theory that, as Hedges puts it, "the RSL is "just a place for sticky old men". But the East Maitland league is still doing it mighty tough.
Finances are stretched. Costs are increasing; as the treasurer concedes, the pre-loved army hut has become a "sponge, soaking up cash". Despite income from hiring out the hut, and occasional grants from government, revenue is declining.
And although numbers have been stabilised by a recruitment campaign that has pulled in men and women who served or are serving in theatres such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and East Timor, membership has declined from a peak of 150.
Those whose deeds in two world wars are proudly displayed on the hut walls have come and gone. Today, the sub-branch depends heavily for its present viability and future survival on Vietnam veterans, such as Sattler and Hedges, who comprise one-third of its 90-odd members.
Sadly, East Maitland sub-branch, which is not formally connected to any RSL club, represents in microcosm the story of the league throughout Australia, as the last of the 1939-45 generation follow their World War I forefathers and mothers to the grave.
At the end of last year, national RSL membership totalled 193,000, down from 230,000 a decade ago. During the same period, NSW numbers fell from 90,000 to 58,000, forcing more than a dozen sub-branches to amalgamate or close.
Of the remaining 420, most are struggling. With an estimated 70 per cent of NSW members aged over 75, and 60 per cent over 85, many sub-branches may not survive. As state president Don Rowe, another Vietnam vet, explains, once membership falls to five, they can no longer fulfil their constitutional obligations.
"Then, the remaining members - the last men standing, if you like - have the option of forming a chapter and attaching themselves to a surviving sub-branch." Just as survivors of the Murrurundi league recently did in nearby Muswellbrook.
Inevitably, such high rates of attrition, combined with closure, amalgamation or rebadging of many RSL clubs - which, although independent of the local sub-branches, remain the most visible presence of the league "brand" - have prompted observers to question the resilience and relevance of the movement.
Historian Michael McKernan is one of many who fear the RSL is in terminal decline - paradoxically at a time when Anzac Day and Remembrance Day, the two events with which it is associated in the public mind, are enjoying a resurgence of support. "For almost a century it's done a wonderful job. It's full of nice, hard-working, well-meaning people. But, sadly, it was always going to have a use-by date."
Once, McKernan says, the league had the ear of the media, of community leaders, state premiers and prime ministers. One RSL hero advanced from the lowest levels of civil service to the most senior because he had been a state RSL president.
It shaped government policy. It made headlines, albeit often for the wrong reasons. However, McKernan suggests that even its advocacy role in dealing with media and government is now being usurped by the Australian Defence Association. "More and more, it seems to me, the RSL is an organisation just talking to itself."
So, what is the present role of the RSL? Is it in imminent danger of being destroyed by inexorable demographic change? Or can it revitalise, reinvent itself in the 21st century?
Although the league has undergone several name adjustments since its formation as the Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia in 1916, reflecting its widening constituency, its mission is little changed.
That remains to provide veterans and ex-service men and women with support, welfare, commemoration, remembrance, a means to enjoy mateship and a "respected and meaningful voice", while promoting pride in the nation, the crown and the flag.
Much of its good work goes unnoticed, says Rowe, whose Sydney office is decorated with a portrait of the Queen, a model of the Centurion tank he drove in Vietnam, flags and other memorabilia. "A few months back we were contacted by police about a guy whose body had been lying in the Glebe morgue for a year. They didn't know what to do with him. He'd served in the navy, so they asked us.
"We contacted his family in England but they didn't want to know. Eventually we arranged an RSL funeral for him. Nine of us gave him a proper send-off. Laid him to rest with some sort of dignity."
Inevitably issues change. The state RSL, for example, has expanded into aged-care communities, created more than 70 day clubs for otherwise home-bound members and struck relationships with youth clubs. "One of my priorities is to ensure that the young people of Australia see what our servicemen and women have done," Rowe says.
On another front, the RSL is tackling mental health problems faced by returning servicemen and women - a subject close to the hearts and minds of Vietnam vets, many of whom are still disaffected over their treatment by both the RSL and government.
Rowe insists the rift has been exaggerated. "It was the same after the Second World War. Blokes would come back and the First World War vets would say, 'What are you doing here, you young whippersnappers? So you think you've been in a real war,"'
Hedges also dismisses the subject with typical vet black humour. Asked if he came through Vietnam mentally unscathed, he redirects the question to his wife, who says, yes, he probably did. "But then I had a head start. I was half-mad when I went into the war."
But national president Bill Crews concedes that some ill-informed critics still have "chips on their shoulders" and continue to wage anonymous "vitriolic attacks" on him through the internet. "A couple of our sub-branches may not have been as welcoming as they might have been. And some people still hold a grudge. As far as they are concerned the RSL was bad in 1968 and is still bad. They have not moved on."
Undeniably, the RSL has. Whatever the public perceptions, its leaders have changed - "from ordinary soldiers to high-ranking officers", says McKernan (Crews, an army engineer, is a retired major-general). So, too, has its tone, its public profile.
"In a way, that could be one of the league's problems. It doesn't have characters any more," says McKernan, recalling former national presidents such as Alf Garland, who memorably alienated the Keating government, and state presidents such as Victorian Bruce Ruxton.
"Love him or loathe him, as many Australians did, Bruce Ruxton was at least recognisable. He was a larrikin, a character, or whatever. He was outspoken. He got himself into the most dreadful stoushes." Over homosexuals. Over Asian immigration.
By comparison, recent RSL leaders have been more softly spoken, less controversial. At the same time they have become arguably less conservative, anglophile and monarchist (it is some time since anyone was expelled for republicanism); certainly, more restrained, inclusive, bipartisan.
Crews makes no apology for that. "Beating up on governments is really not a very productive endeavour," he says with the acquired patience of a man who still regularly deals with complaints from punters aggrieved over treatment at RSL clubs over which he has no control.
"We have to accept the reality that prime ministers have their attention across a number of areas, many of which didn't exist in the league's early days. The important thing is, if I wish to see the prime minister, I always can."
Despite the advance of the Australian Defence Association, which is run out of Canberra by former soldier Neil James, Crews is confident the league will retain a prominent role in Australian political and military life: inevitably reduced in numbers but not run down. "We've been here for 92 years and we'll be here for another 92. At least. It's not all about sitting back saying, 'Oooh, the community owes us, veterans deserve this, veterans deserve that. There is so much to do." Lest Australians forget.
Amid the general, demography-driven retreat, which Crews concedes is unstoppable, there are some encouraging signs of fightback across all age groups.
Although 28 premises have closed or amalgamated in NSW during the past decade, Graeme Carroll, of the RSL & Services Clubs Association, says RSL clubs are building on a long-standing reputation for being "friendly, safe and excellent value". Some are being reinvented. The ambitious Castle Hill now provides a gym and swimming pool. Club Katoomba has been repackaged as Katoomba RSL, a name that chief executive David Cassidy says resonates strongly both with national and international visitors.
And as Don Rowe points out, the RSL brand (motto: "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance") has never deterred big names, big crowds from flocking to Rooty Hill, the "Las Vegas of the west".
Similarly, RSL state and sub-branches are working hard to recruit new members to replace an annual exodus of several thousand a year. Leading the charge are existing members such as Darren McManus-Smith. A former paratrooper, he positively bristles at the suggestion that the sun has set on the league. Spared the diplomatic niceties now demanded of senior officials, he says, "It's a lot of bloody nonsense."
He points to the strength of his local RSL sub-branch of South Lake Macquarie. It has about 300 members, a third of them serving personnel, drawn from army, navy and air force, and from service in the last world war, Korea, Malaya and Borneo, Vietnam, Namibia, Afghanistan, Iraq, East Timor and Somalia.
"OK, our demographics are against us, but who wants another frigging war to boost the numbers?" says McManus-Smith, who is what used to be called the RSL state recruitment officer - a title recently abandoned because it sounded "too martial".
He now leads the mobile information team, setting up shop, flying the flag, banging the drum, not just at official resettlement or "transitional" seminars but at events such as the Maitland steam engine rally, the Bowral tulip festival and the Nowra air show.
It's paying off, too. "Some people have still got the shits with us, but we're pumping along."