“ I grew up in a housing commission area in Ipswich. It was a good neighbourhood. We all knew each other. My father had a big accident and was in hospital for a long time. My mum would go to visit him in the Brisbane Hospital so our neighbours would muck in and look after my sister Denise and I. I have more siblings now but at that time there was just the two of us. I have fond memories of cricket in the backyard. I could walk up the road to Leichhardt School in Ipswich. I think it was great growing up in housing commission. I realise when we talk about affordable housing now most people don’t want affordable housing near them because they think it’s going to be a rough area, gonna be this or gonna be that, so I think we don’t really deliver public housing very well any more. We don’t deliver it at all in a lot of places and I think that’s rather tragic. It was normal to have housing commission houses built for people struggling. It was a bit different in my area. My neighbour next to me was a Pilot, across the road was a teacher. Some of the houses were put aside for public servants so it was a real mix of people in our neighbourhood.
I could read before I started school. My Pilot neighbour Brian would step outside and I’d say …Brian, spell encyclopaedia. I was only 4. He’d say Janelle, I’ve spelt it 10 times already. He was a Dressmaker too so he would make us things. We had big backyards with chooks and my job was to bring them in the evening. My mother had a big veggie garden so we ate well.
My family was quite dysfunctional. There was a lot of domestic violence and alcohol, so not a happy household that way. That stays with you forever. It never goes away but it has inspired me to do good things and help a lot of people. I used it well.
I left school at 13 so I never got that education at school. We couldn’t live with our parents so we had to live alone. Consequently I worked ever since I left school so I’ve been in the workforce about 52 years. I’ve had every sort of job. I’ve been a checkout chick, a barmaid, a factory worker, a foundry worker, taught gymnastics, taught swimming, worked at the meat-works. I was the first girl to work on the kill floor in the Abattoir. I worked at Golden Circle cannery where the machines core the pineapple then you have to get the prickles out. We had to wrap our arms up because the acid from the pineapples would burn your skin. Next was thousands of beans coming at you which would make you spin out. I worked in a Foundry, a thousand degrees, no OH&S. I spent a few years working in Timor. The Indonesian military had left and Timor was rising from the ashes. I went to the UN 2 years running and spent a few months there at the General Assembly. I never had to remember a name because everyone is ‘Your Excellency,’ a bit like when you forget names here, it’s mate.
I always wanted more education. When I was at school I wanted to be either a Doctor, a Missionary in China or a Writer but I didn’t know how to be any of those because I didn’t know anyone who did that. That was another world. During those working years I always did extra courses at TAFE and I studied.
I still saw my parents. Mum was an alcoholic and she’d been a victim of domestic violence and Dad was kind of not there but we all still saw each other. He died last year at the age of 92. We would visit him in the home. Mum is still alive in Ipswich with my stepdad Richie. One day she said …I’m never going to have another drink and she never did. We were older by then. It was very different then as there was no help for women in that situation. It was so difficult, still is. There were no pensions. Ipswich was very working class, very Labor. We had the wool mills, forestry, outside mining and all my family worked in those things. Everyone had jobs.
I went on an adventure with some girlfriends. We drove to Perth where we stayed for a few months. We’d pick up odd jobs. I drove across the Nullarbor Plain when it was all dirt. I came back and moved to Melbourne where I worked in a Nomad Aeroplane factory making bits for planes. I worked with women from other countries which was different for me. Ipswich was not so multi cultural. They were all great cooks and brought in yummy lunches so I ate lot’s of good stuff. One of the friends I was travelling with was from Kyogle so we came back here to visit her Mum and both got jobs at the Tatts in Lismore. The Publican said …Have you ever been a barmaid? We said… No! But we know how to do it. So we got the job. Now you have to go through so much rigmarole. A lot of that stuff is total bull. We’ve tied ourselves up in bureaucratic knots with everything and with kids getting jobs, it pains me. They used to be able to walk in and get a go.
When I came here to Lismore I was still keen on getting an education so I went to TAFE and did some courses. I then got into a course in Wagga where I stayed for a year then came back here and got into teaching at the College of Advanced Education. I worked full time in the womens refuge where I stayed for 5 years. While I was there I set up the Far North Coast Domestic Violence Liaison Committee with the then Superintendent Angus McTavish. It was the first one outside Metropolitan Sydney. John McInerney was the then Sergeant of Police and was put on it with me. I still see some of the those people. That was a good committee. We wrote a policy for victims of DV for when they access hospital. One of the problems with DV is, if you don’t ask questions people won’t always tell you. So with another woman we wrote that policy and the head of regional health here agreed to implement it locally. He got me to go to 26 hospitals and introduce it. I took a local Indigenous woman with me so together we went out to all the hospitals. We set up committee’s for services we didn’t have. If you were under 18 and homeless you weren’t eligible for Department of Housing which was so wrong so I got that changed too.
What I want to say about Lismore is… When I came here, I felt like I’d come home. I knew I’d never go back to Ipswich. I was on my way back there when I stopped at Kyogle and Lismore. I didn’t want to go anywhere else. I thought, this is it. I’ll put my roots down. It will be my community, it is my community and I’ve lived here for over 40 years so I’m quite local now. I’ve done different jobs here as well including the Workers Club, The Winsome, The Northern Rivers Hotel, I’ve owned a hotel.
When I got elected Federally I was at the Workers Club and some of the workers I had previously worked with were there. They were so excited. It didn’t matter about politics, they were just excited that one of the workers club workers was now the Federal Member. It was really nice. “