“I was born in NZ Aotearoa and lived there with my Mum, Dad and my twin brothers. My Mum moved to Nimbin onto a community when I was 6. My Mum and her new partner were into the Rajneesh movement, Osho…Orange people.
Throughout my childhood I spent year on, year off between New Zealand and here. That was amazing because over there was the beautiful, wild west coast beaches and then here was the rainforest out in the bush, free living style. Such different lifestyles! I think as an adult now, imagine doing that to my kids…it would be really hard. It was really hard saying goodbye to one parent for a whole year.
My life here ended up with quite a lot of complex trauma attached to it. I moved into Lismore to a youth refuge before my 14th birthday because I’d been through a lot of stuff at home and on the community.”
‘Is that something you can talk about or you prefer not to?’
“I’m quite open about my history, I don’t go into specifics but I’m definitely an advocate around the #Metoo movement and an advocate around children and what they are being exposed to. I’m also a furious feminist. Its kind of like…the question is ‘When will you get abused?’ not if.
I had 3 different men sexually abuse me before I was 10 and that’s just the beginning of my sexual assault history which carried through teenage hood into adulthood. I’m quiet an angry feminist as a result of that.
I went to the youth refuge here when it was in Wyrallah Rd and I lived there from the age of 13. I’d left school, left home and started getting wasted to try and forget about it. I was self medicating trying to forget. When you see teenagers on the street getting wasted or going off, they are doing it for a reason. They are trying to forget or they’re disconnected or they are missing something. I think that’s our responsibility as a community to make that connection.
I was pregnant when I was 17 and my daughter is 21 now. She is my angel, she saved my life. I was on a hard, fast road of not giving a f#@k and I had this little moment when I was 17, I turned to my partner and said, If I get pregnant I’m going to have a baby so if you don’t want to, you better sort yourself out. The next month I was pregnant. I’ve been pregnant twice in my life so I have 2 daughters. I’ve been very lucky as I’ve never had to have an abortion even though I was very promiscuous. When I was pregnant I was still living in youth housing. Lily’s or Raddies it was called back then before it became Youth Connections and now Social Futures.
I was running Tie Dye workshops and doing some youth work so I moved out to Nimbin. North Coast Housing had built some little purpose built houses for young mum’s. I moved there 3 weeks before I had my first child. I was 18, had my beautiful girl and nestled into being a mum. I was easily able to walk away from the party’s and the drugs. I was really blessed in that for some reason I don’t have the addictive gene so I’ve lost a lot of friends to suicide and a lot of friends to heroin and heavy drugs but I actually never went there. I never tried a needle. I did try a lot of other stuff, heaps of it and I do believe that was just luck that I didn’t get lost, knowing some of the people who have been lost to drugs and alcohol. In that sense, even though I’m not religious I can really respect religion because it saved a lot of people. I can respect it on that level.
I started doing work at the Youth club in Nimbin and 2 women who ran the Neighbourhood Centre, Leanne Draper and Lizette Twisleton became my mentors and suggested I go to TAFE. Because I’d left school so young I couldn’t spell very well and I was pretty nervous but I went and did Certificate 4 in Youth work. I was running the Youth club out there and became an unofficial youth presence throughout the community meetings.
I worked at the Hemp Embassy for a little while as well. I’ve never really smoked pot. I think there is a genetic issue with my family and pot. My mum and dad smoked a lot throughout their youth. They met in Durban, South Africa smoking weed and travelling around India with a block of hash. I think something happened because I did smoke a little bit when I was young and I would get a kind of Psychosis from pot. Both my brothers green out. It was interesting living in Nimbin and being a non smoker but I was still fully involved in the Mardi Grass parade and being a little ratbag out there. My older daughter has cyclic vomiting which is called Cannabinoid Hyperemesis so if she smokes pot she’ll end up in hospital on a drip. Its pretty interesting the effect that pot had on 3 generations. I’ve tried to speak out about my experience of Psychosis with pot, also with this Hyperemesis and it’s interesting. People get quite protective and defensive around pot. It can definitely get put on a pedestal. I think there is some great stuff about it, Medicinal Cannabis is fantastic, lets’s use it to make clothes..fantastic! But I think it’s unrealistic to pretend it doesn’t have any bad side effects.
I ended up being given the opportunity to build onto a community. I went to the bank and I said to the lady…I want to build a house. Her name was Val. I was on a single parent pension doing a little bit of work. I said I need $30,000 because out there you can build pretty cheaply. She told me I needed to save so much and I saved double. They gave me the loan and I got to build my first house when I was 24. I built a rammed earth (sawdust, sand, cement) home with a spiral staircase and bottled walls. It’s very arty and very special and I rent that house out now. I have a lovely tenant who can’t believe her luck. It’s so picturesque. I moved back onto the community where I grew up and into this beautiful home.
One of the abusers was still there though I hadn’t remembered what happened till I was 30. I was in a therapy session when the repressed memories came up and it was like a ton of bricks had been dropped onto me. It was like I’d always known. I’m so intrigued by the human psyche’s ability to go… ‘Ok we’re just going to take that away from you until we think you can handle it and then we’ll give it back to you.’ F#@k! I was so angry. He was the typical Paedophile…He said..You know, you were just like a hot water balloon for me! It was really sicko stuff. I took it to the Police but I didn’t know dates. The abuse happened over a year. They didn’t have enough to go on even though I had these emails from him partially admitting what he’d done. He was kicked off the community and left the area. He already had a history.
I’d had a previous one that happened earlier from an Ayurvedic healer. A guy called Lou and he had sexually assaulted me in a healing session where he was supposed to be healing me from my childhood sexual abuse. He was saying….You have to do these chants to forgive and let go of all this anger and then ……… That one went to court, we tapped his phone and he admitted to every single detail of what was a full on assault. It took a couple of years to get to court and by this time I’d met my husband who I’ve now been with for 15 years. I was heavily pregnant with my second child in the court at the time.“