“I was born in Melbourne and I had my first daughter at 18. As a way of earning a living I became an artist’s model. I separated from her father after a year and a half and shared with another man who went on to become a very good stepfather to my daughter Portia. He was a part of the Melbourne jazz scene. We moved from the inner city to out past Eltham where there were a lot of artists colonies after city rents became expensive.
We were into the dinner parties, excessive drinking and so forth. It was there that I took LSD for the first time and stopped drinking overnight. It was a very good thing as I loved drinking and we drank too much. Overnight I realised I didn’t want to drink. It was so life changing that I saw it as a spiritual experience rather than a party experience. With that change of lifestyle I met a whole lot of lovely people who were into Yoga, Eastern philosophy and Vegetarianism so my lifestyle changed dramatically. It probably saved my life. At that time I was in my early 20s.
We had heard about places like Mullumbimby and Cedar Bay, the sort of great hippy revolution, so we left Victoria with a tent. We stayed by the Murray River for 3 months. Our main focus was to eat nothing processed so we had no litter at all. Everything was bought in bulk, no tins or plastic. It was a lovely lifestyle and eventually in 1973 we arrived in Mullum in Coopers Lane and found an old farm house for $6pw. We heard of this festival that was happening in Nimbin, The Aquarius Festival. At the time they were encouraging people to get into tribes so we were the Mullum tribe and we all went over and rented a little bit of land with a creek and a huge fire in the middle. It was a lovely experience, no electricity. I can still recall that feeling of anticipation, not knowing how many people would arrive, if we would have enough food for everyone. Things did seem to work out the way you wanted them too.
After the festival we went to Nth QLD for a while and lived on Garners Beach opposite Dunk Island which was paradise. We then became Fruitarian and lived on a community. That didn’t last long. (laughs). We returned and moved to a Burringbar farmhouse for a couple of years and Portia went to Burringbar school. We called our house The Inn as people would just arrive and play music. We had feasts and I did work on the local farms. I realised why the hippies and the farmers weren’t mixing was because we didn’t think we had much in common. I would pick tomatoes then go to the pub to have a shower and a beer after work. We’d talk about the price of veggies and that was really lovely for me. We just needed common ground.
During that time I was asked to cook at the first Meditation retreat at the Chenrezig institute in QLD. They were the first Tibetan Lamas to come to Australia. I went up and cooked in a shed for 200 people for a month. That was life changing because I met Lama Yeshe. I thought whatever it is he’s teaching I want to be like that. I think it was the first time I have been in the presence of unconditional love. They had a centre in Nepal which was the only place Westerners could have a Tibetan, Buddhist retreat in English. I packed up everything and with my daughter who was about 12 moved to the East. We got a bus from Nepal through India, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Iran, Turkey to Greece and ended up in Amsterdam for a while.
I heard the Lamas were in England and they’d just bought an old priory in the Lakes District so I met up with my friends Jane and Nicky Shand (Nicky started the Echo) who were there at the time running a little restaurant. It needed a lot of work and I realised I had the circumstances as a traveller to stay on to help. We lived in this grand old priory which was like living in a refrigerator. I was the cook, Portia went to the local school and we stayed for a year.
We returned to India and ended up in Poona. On the way back we stopped in Holland and Portia wanted to stay with my friends and their children rather than go back to India. I went by myself and I got this strong feeling to go to Delhi. There in the Australian Embassy was a letter from my friends in Holland saying they had all moved to Poona in India. I ended up going to the Ashram and though I was resistant at first I became a Sanyasin which is where I got my last name from.
After a period of time we returned to Australia. I met up with an old friend who is now my current partner. He’d been my neighbour. He’s a Marine Engineer and he was working on prawn trawlers out of Darwin. I got a job sorting prawns. By that time I was pregnant with my second daughter. There is 15 years between them from two different fathers. The only thing I knew with that pregnancy was I was not going to hospital so we came back to Lismore and it was the early days of Birth and Beyond in Nimbin. I needed a home to birth in so I ended up buying this house in South Lismore to have the home birth not thinking I would settle there. Thirty-five years later and we are still there. I had no idea about Lismore.
I started training to be a therapist. I trained in everything experiential. I became interested in grief and loss and that’s when I met Elizabeth Kubler Ross. While working as a therapist we opened a coffee shop called Portias Place and the slogan was ‘Where the quality of coffee is not strained.’
During that time I read an article in the Northern Star on HIV. It was a doctor saying that you may not think it will come to your area but it will. When I read It I got this sinking feeling in my stomach. This was the time when people with HIV were being treated like lepers. Food was left outside the door, people got into space suits before they entered your home. Meanwhile there was a lovely gay restaurant here called the Double Dutch and there was ‘Gay Waves’ on the local radio. At the time we had a very homophobic editor of our local newspaper so all these dreadful editorials were being printed about HIV and gay people. It became so scary even the Double Dutch received a bomb threat. Mike closed the restaurant and left town, stopped the gay waves and lots of other gay people left Lismore. I wasn’t qualified at the time to start an AIDS Council.
After I read this article I paid for myself to go down to a health department workshop about HIV. In those days we weren’t even sure on how it was transmitted. I came back and some people had heard what I had done. A social worker Julie Hornibrook called me who was on the same wavelength. We got a steering committee. We had no funding so it was very frustrating and people still weren’t presenting even though I knew they were here. That was disbanded but the main committee continued meeting. St Vincent’s were very supportive. We kept minutes and we had a good cross section of Lismore. The AIDS Council of Sydney discovered that somewhere existed outside of Darlinghurst and appointed a gay rural officer called Michael Lockhart who came up. He was so impressed by what Lismore was doing and after a year we received funding. I became the co-ordinator of the AIDS council for the first couple of years.
When I look back over my whole life I’m a starter of things. When it becomes mainstream I’m not interested anymore. My previous partner and I back in Melbourne started the Melbourne Jazz club. We found this venue in Kew that remained the Melbourne Jazz Club for 40 years.
I ended up leaving the AIDS Council with a major burnout because there was so much to do. We had set up a clinic and education programmes. This was about 1989. When I left I then reconnected with my Buddhist teachers. I ended up going on a pilgrimage with the Nechung Oracle which is the main oracle to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans. We actually went in convoy with the Dalai Lama right up to Ladak. I met a student of the Dalai Lama’s then rainmaker, whom I had known in the 70’s. When he heard about me he gave me some of the bones of Yeshe Dorje the rainmaker which he’s received as a gift after the cremation. I came back to Australia and there was a guy in Lismore doing Yoga tours to India and he suggested I do a tour with his company. I faxed Karma, the student of Yeshe’s and asked him if he’d like to lead a pilgrimage. Twenty years later he and I are still taking groups on pilgrimage to India. Now I only do it once a year in small groups. Because we have been doing it for so long we have fabulous connections in India. People get to meet Tibetan families, nuns in caves and people you wouldn’t normally meet.
After I left the AIDS Council, my friend Paul Burr had been really helpful in setting up the AIDS Council and had started the Needle Exchange in Canberra, I asked him to come up here and he did selflessly. He wasn’t paid and he trained all the volunteers.
Paul had a friend who was the head of Social Work at RPA in Sydney. Her name was Lila and we met. This was sort of a miracle and we still talk about it. She got the heads of all departments at RPA, all the Professors and Psychologists. They all agreed that they would fund their staff to go to seminars Lila had asked me to do on death and dying. I developed a 2 day seminar and at the same time the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying had come out. It was such a gift to the world. I met the author of that book. I was able to travel the world running Spiritual Care workshops. I did retreats for women who were told there was no further treatment, so end of life preparation. It was such a privilege to do that. I now mainly do spiritual preparation for end of life, grief and loss counselling and some supervision for medical professionals.
Often I find myself with people when they’re dying. It just sort of happens. I will call up to relieve a family member who has been sitting with a dying loved one and often when they are gone the person will die. That’s sort of what is happening in my life now. We will end up having midwives for the dying like we do for birthing but right now there is no model for that.
My eldest daughter lives in Lismore and my youngest daughter Tilly is a Librarian in Brisbane. I also have a 24 year old grandaughter Lily who is Portias daughter. The biggest thrill for me is Lily is now my PA in India and to share this with her is beautiful.
I love Lismore. It’s a hidden secret and we shouldn’t tell everyone how fabulous it is. I’ve been here for 35 years so I’ve seen incredible changes but I love the variety of people, the acceptance, the quirkiness. When I see all these people dressing in mad clothes I thank them. I love the markets, the inclusiveness, I think the gay community is the biggest miracle. When I look at New Year’s Eve and remember what it was like. Now the editorials in the newspapers are how much money is being brought in and no homophobic rants anymore. It’s such a great community. Sanctuary and the African families settling here makes it better and better. Norpa is brilliant. We used to have to go to cities to see world class theatre now we can walk to City Hall or the Star Court theatre. We are so blessed. So many people who live on the coast….We say, you wouldn’t like it, don’t think you should come, you wouldn’t like it at all.”