“ I was born in a birthing house on Oxford St, Sydney. I have a twin sister but we’re not identical and I also have a younger sister. I grew up in Ipswich till I was 16. I moved out as soon as I could to Brisbane because I was so excited to see and experience the world.
I went to Uni doing a Bachelor of Multimedia which I ended up hating. I thought because I loved film it would be great but I dropped out as lot’s of it involved coding, which ironically I do now. It was so much computer stuff so I only lasted 6 months. I moved back with my Dad and started my own business selling vintage clothes on-line. I opened a shop couple of years later.
My story is confusing as I moved to at least 30 places. I moved back to Brisbane and did a Diploma of Audio Engineering while I was running my business. I got 50k followers in the first year. It was when FB stores were a big thing and I started at the right time. I had no idea how to run it and I was totally out of my depth. I got to a point where I couldn’t finish Uni and have the store so I stopped. I was 19, moved back to Ipswich and opened a shop in the main street called Rocket Science. It was a super quirky shop and it was a lot of fun. Six months later I closed that because I didn’t like it anymore. It was hard because so many other business owners said, I wonder how long this will last? I really wanted to succeed but it wasn’t me any more. I’d sort of done it since I was 16. I wanted to be a teenager and live my life.
My first boyfriend and I were together for 3 years. We got together at 16 and broke up when I opened the store. It was such bad timing. We were together from so young. When I was 19 I closed the store and started dating my neighbour. He was 31. I lived above the shop and he lived next door. We got together when the big floods happened. We were isolated from the whole CBD so we started hanging out and then we started dating.
I was approached for a job in Byron in a marketing agency. They wanted help setting up their on-line website for Fashion Australia which doesn’t really exist any longer after I left. My boyfriend was moving to Byron so he wanted me to take the job. I closed the shop and took the Byron job. We rented this grotty warehouse with enormous rent. We were covered with bird lice, paying $600pw in the Byron Industrial Estate. Absolutely ridiculous! We should have rented a room in a share house. My boyfriend was abusive and I knew I had to get out of that relationship. He wasn’t at first but there were definitely signs when I think back. I worked and supported him while he did nothing. He was very entrepreneurial which I liked but I ended up supporting him the whole time. There were snakes where we were living so I moved out but he wanted to stay. I stupidly paid 2 lots of rent because I somehow felt responsible and then I found out he was cheating on me. He became homeless when I left and I still I felt responsible but I stayed away.
I moved back to Brisbane with my cousin. I was doing web design and marketing and then at 20 I met Tom who is my partner now. I moved in with Tom after a month or so. You’re seeing a pattern here (laughs). Brisbane never felt like my home, there’s so many people but I didn’t really know anyone. We moved back to Ipswich and got our Border Collie Casper who we still have. He’s 6 now. I’m 26. We stayed in Ipswich so I could be close to family then we moved to Melbourne to be close to Toms family for a year.
We wanted to find a place that felt like our home. His dream life was to be an Engineer and I wanted to be a Ceramic Artist full time. We looked up the places that had those courses and it was here in Lismore or Darwin. Lismore won. We’ve been here for 5 years now. Tom’s in his last year at Uni. He’s doing his thesis. I did my Ceramics course at Lismore TAFE which was so great. I love Lismore TAFE.
When we first moved here we didn’t know the area at all and we had a couple of bad experiences. We rented a place we hadn’t seen that was listed as pet friendly and safe but is was on Ballina Road, no fences, crappy housemates and it was awful. We moved out. We moved a few times. It was bad because we didn’t know the area so we picked some pretty dodgy streets. We got a place we liked and wanted a long lease but after 6 months the owners moved back in.
Eventually we rented a studio in Goonellabah which unbeknownst to us was owned by people who belonged to Universal Medicine. (names withheld). Our dog was attacked by another dog and his leg was ripped open. He had to have surgery. We’d only lived there 2 weeks. We were pretty broke but Keen Street Vets were incredible and helped us out. The woman who owned the studio said to me..I did a reading on Casper and he was attacked because it was his karma. In a past life he was abusive to women and that is why he was attacked. That day we pulled the blinds. I did my research on UM and they were both working in media. We weren’t allowed to bring alcohol into our house when we lived there because they said it brings the Devil into the house. It was freaky. We got out of there fast.
We love where we are now in Girards Hill. We feel safe here. I hope we get to stay in this house. We’ve kept our rent up during this Covid time. Tom really loves the Uni here. The day I arrived here I got a job at The Station Hotel where I worked for a year. I worked at Two Roads Vintage shop for Mel until the 2017 flood hit. I also worked at La Vida and Dan Murphy’s. I always worked while I was studying. After I did my Diploma I studied Industrial Textile design at Wollongbar.
I had my wisdom teeth out with a facial surgeon and I got really sick. I had to save $6k to get it done. They gave me Penicillin which I’m allergic to. I had told them but someone gave it to me accidentally. I was so sick and got this reaction called Antibiotic induced Ulcerative Colitis which causes internal bleeding. My stomach has never been the same. The thing that has helped me the most is CBD oil. If I stop taking it for a few days I get sick again.
I have a ceramics business which I’ve done from home for the last 3 years. I wanted to do more so I started the Support Lismore Business page. I make websites so I thought I may as well. I started the page because of the impact I was seeing from this Coronavirus. Having a small business I know how much goes into one. There was so much talk within our business community of shops closing and people losing everything. It’s bad enough losing a job. I felt a real sense of wanting to help. When they started talking about lockdowns I went around to all the businesses inviting people to join it. I wasn’t sure how it would go and only did a FB page as a sideline.
Another Lismore page slandered me on line because I was posting all these photos of meals I’d bought from local cafe’s and restaurants. I spent a lot of money in the first 2 weeks. We had take away every single night until I just couldn’t do it any longer. We spent quite a bit of our savings because we felt passionate about buying from every single business. We took the pics and shared and then we got slandered. Other people brought it my attention. He was saying I was getting free meals and Crime Stoppers was now onto it. Just pathetic! He said I was promoting myself as like a hero of Lismore (laughs). and that I was charging people to promote their business and accepting free food, all of which was untrue. I’ve never accepted anything for free.
I like Lismore. I want to stay here and run for Council. It all depends on where Tom can work. He’s super clever. He got a scholarship to go to Toyota for an internship in Mechanical Engineering. He went over and did it but he hated it so he came back and did Civil Engineering instead. I feel like I’ve never had a career. My partner has his Engineering and knows where he’s going. He said this morning..Where do you see yourself in 5 years? I’m like f#@k off Tom, maybe with someone more attractive laughs). He’s very clever and very stable. He definitely grounds me. I’m the total opposite.
My best friend is my kiln usually but now Tom and I are both in the house all the time. It’s nice but it’s like ‘Go free’ (laughs). The rents here are more expensive than in Melbourne and Brisbane. We were paying $380 on the Mornington Peninsular for a great house and here we pay $420 for a small house which isn’t so great but we love the area.
I’m working on a little ‘zine because I have a formula for campaigning I want to share. I’ve done a bit of environmental work. I think there is a process, whether it’s Council or organisations. Last year, because I was sending so many parcels, I noticed that there was a law with Australia Post….Those plastic satchels were $8.50 to send. My whole brand is really Eco so I don’t use any plastic and it’s really hard not to use bubble wrap when you’re shipping ceramics. It really pissed me off when their compostable satchels which were the exact same size cost 2 to 3 times as much to send to the exact same location. I think I paid thousands of dollars in the beginning before I got annoyed enough. I did a petition and got 6,000 people to sign it. That’s when I realised you can protest in a clever way. I looked at their policies and they said Australia Post is really dedicated to sustainability. I was like this is discouraging sustainable practice. Two days later the CEO of Australia Post contacted me and in October last year they redesigned the entire postal system and adopted my suggested method. The little book is about how to go about things like that. One of the chapters is ‘Respect is a bureaucratic process.”
I went to Uni doing a Bachelor of Multimedia which I ended up hating. I thought because I loved film it would be great but I dropped out as lot’s of it involved coding, which ironically I do now. It was so much computer stuff so I only lasted 6 months. I moved back with my Dad and started my own business selling vintage clothes on-line. I opened a shop couple of years later.
My story is confusing as I moved to at least 30 places. I moved back to Brisbane and did a Diploma of Audio Engineering while I was running my business. I got 50k followers in the first year. It was when FB stores were a big thing and I started at the right time. I had no idea how to run it and I was totally out of my depth. I got to a point where I couldn’t finish Uni and have the store so I stopped. I was 19, moved back to Ipswich and opened a shop in the main street called Rocket Science. It was a super quirky shop and it was a lot of fun. Six months later I closed that because I didn’t like it anymore. It was hard because so many other business owners said, I wonder how long this will last? I really wanted to succeed but it wasn’t me any more. I’d sort of done it since I was 16. I wanted to be a teenager and live my life.
My first boyfriend and I were together for 3 years. We got together at 16 and broke up when I opened the store. It was such bad timing. We were together from so young. When I was 19 I closed the store and started dating my neighbour. He was 31. I lived above the shop and he lived next door. We got together when the big floods happened. We were isolated from the whole CBD so we started hanging out and then we started dating.
I was approached for a job in Byron in a marketing agency. They wanted help setting up their on-line website for Fashion Australia which doesn’t really exist any longer after I left. My boyfriend was moving to Byron so he wanted me to take the job. I closed the shop and took the Byron job. We rented this grotty warehouse with enormous rent. We were covered with bird lice, paying $600pw in the Byron Industrial Estate. Absolutely ridiculous! We should have rented a room in a share house. My boyfriend was abusive and I knew I had to get out of that relationship. He wasn’t at first but there were definitely signs when I think back. I worked and supported him while he did nothing. He was very entrepreneurial which I liked but I ended up supporting him the whole time. There were snakes where we were living so I moved out but he wanted to stay. I stupidly paid 2 lots of rent because I somehow felt responsible and then I found out he was cheating on me. He became homeless when I left and I still I felt responsible but I stayed away.
I moved back to Brisbane with my cousin. I was doing web design and marketing and then at 20 I met Tom who is my partner now. I moved in with Tom after a month or so. You’re seeing a pattern here (laughs). Brisbane never felt like my home, there’s so many people but I didn’t really know anyone. We moved back to Ipswich and got our Border Collie Casper who we still have. He’s 6 now. I’m 26. We stayed in Ipswich so I could be close to family then we moved to Melbourne to be close to Toms family for a year.
We wanted to find a place that felt like our home. His dream life was to be an Engineer and I wanted to be a Ceramic Artist full time. We looked up the places that had those courses and it was here in Lismore or Darwin. Lismore won. We’ve been here for 5 years now. Tom’s in his last year at Uni. He’s doing his thesis. I did my Ceramics course at Lismore TAFE which was so great. I love Lismore TAFE.
When we first moved here we didn’t know the area at all and we had a couple of bad experiences. We rented a place we hadn’t seen that was listed as pet friendly and safe but is was on Ballina Road, no fences, crappy housemates and it was awful. We moved out. We moved a few times. It was bad because we didn’t know the area so we picked some pretty dodgy streets. We got a place we liked and wanted a long lease but after 6 months the owners moved back in.
Eventually we rented a studio in Goonellabah which unbeknownst to us was owned by people who belonged to Universal Medicine. (names withheld). Our dog was attacked by another dog and his leg was ripped open. He had to have surgery. We’d only lived there 2 weeks. We were pretty broke but Keen Street Vets were incredible and helped us out. The woman who owned the studio said to me..I did a reading on Casper and he was attacked because it was his karma. In a past life he was abusive to women and that is why he was attacked. That day we pulled the blinds. I did my research on UM and they were both working in media. We weren’t allowed to bring alcohol into our house when we lived there because they said it brings the Devil into the house. It was freaky. We got out of there fast.
We love where we are now in Girards Hill. We feel safe here. I hope we get to stay in this house. We’ve kept our rent up during this Covid time. Tom really loves the Uni here. The day I arrived here I got a job at The Station Hotel where I worked for a year. I worked at Two Roads Vintage shop for Mel until the 2017 flood hit. I also worked at La Vida and Dan Murphy’s. I always worked while I was studying. After I did my Diploma I studied Industrial Textile design at Wollongbar.
I had my wisdom teeth out with a facial surgeon and I got really sick. I had to save $6k to get it done. They gave me Penicillin which I’m allergic to. I had told them but someone gave it to me accidentally. I was so sick and got this reaction called Antibiotic induced Ulcerative Colitis which causes internal bleeding. My stomach has never been the same. The thing that has helped me the most is CBD oil. If I stop taking it for a few days I get sick again.
I have a ceramics business which I’ve done from home for the last 3 years. I wanted to do more so I started the Support Lismore Business page. I make websites so I thought I may as well. I started the page because of the impact I was seeing from this Coronavirus. Having a small business I know how much goes into one. There was so much talk within our business community of shops closing and people losing everything. It’s bad enough losing a job. I felt a real sense of wanting to help. When they started talking about lockdowns I went around to all the businesses inviting people to join it. I wasn’t sure how it would go and only did a FB page as a sideline.
Another Lismore page slandered me on line because I was posting all these photos of meals I’d bought from local cafe’s and restaurants. I spent a lot of money in the first 2 weeks. We had take away every single night until I just couldn’t do it any longer. We spent quite a bit of our savings because we felt passionate about buying from every single business. We took the pics and shared and then we got slandered. Other people brought it my attention. He was saying I was getting free meals and Crime Stoppers was now onto it. Just pathetic! He said I was promoting myself as like a hero of Lismore (laughs). and that I was charging people to promote their business and accepting free food, all of which was untrue. I’ve never accepted anything for free.
I like Lismore. I want to stay here and run for Council. It all depends on where Tom can work. He’s super clever. He got a scholarship to go to Toyota for an internship in Mechanical Engineering. He went over and did it but he hated it so he came back and did Civil Engineering instead. I feel like I’ve never had a career. My partner has his Engineering and knows where he’s going. He said this morning..Where do you see yourself in 5 years? I’m like f#@k off Tom, maybe with someone more attractive laughs). He’s very clever and very stable. He definitely grounds me. I’m the total opposite.
My best friend is my kiln usually but now Tom and I are both in the house all the time. It’s nice but it’s like ‘Go free’ (laughs). The rents here are more expensive than in Melbourne and Brisbane. We were paying $380 on the Mornington Peninsular for a great house and here we pay $420 for a small house which isn’t so great but we love the area.
I’m working on a little ‘zine because I have a formula for campaigning I want to share. I’ve done a bit of environmental work. I think there is a process, whether it’s Council or organisations. Last year, because I was sending so many parcels, I noticed that there was a law with Australia Post….Those plastic satchels were $8.50 to send. My whole brand is really Eco so I don’t use any plastic and it’s really hard not to use bubble wrap when you’re shipping ceramics. It really pissed me off when their compostable satchels which were the exact same size cost 2 to 3 times as much to send to the exact same location. I think I paid thousands of dollars in the beginning before I got annoyed enough. I did a petition and got 6,000 people to sign it. That’s when I realised you can protest in a clever way. I looked at their policies and they said Australia Post is really dedicated to sustainability. I was like this is discouraging sustainable practice. Two days later the CEO of Australia Post contacted me and in October last year they redesigned the entire postal system and adopted my suggested method. The little book is about how to go about things like that. One of the chapters is ‘Respect is a bureaucratic process.”