I travelled. I lived in Tokyo, travelled to Israel, Berlin, UK, New York and SE Asia. I also joined a wild convoy through the Australian outback for six months called Earthdream.
I fell pregnant while working on Wolverine and light duties was driving a fork lift which is not really light duties. I had two kids four years apart. They are now 12 and 16. My partner, kids and I moved up here seven years ago and we bought our house in Lismore Heights directly from this beautiful elderly couple I met at a cafe. I was up here looking for houses and the woman overheard me talking to Simon who had the Shoebox Cafe. She said they were just having a celebratory lunch because they got the house they were looking at in Casino and their house here was for sale. I didn’t have my car with me so they went home, did the lawns and came down, picked me up and took me to their house. I was like, Yep!. All the negotiating was done by text and I’m still in contact with them. It was such a nice way to come to Lismore. We never thought we could afford to buy a home.
I skated constantly as a kid so when I moved to Lismore in my mid 40s where there are lots of pubs and a skate rink, I took up roller derby. Although our league is all gender, it’s mostly populated by larger than life women, so I fit right in. It’s my happy place with all that healthy violence….my derby name is Sneaky.
My partner serendipitously got a job at the Uni where we didn’t have to panic about the mortgage. We all call him Swerve, everyone but his Mum because in high school there were seven Steves in his year so they all ended up with permanent nicknames. Everyone assumed when we moved here that we followed his job and I was like, “I will have you know….!” The assumptions people’s brains make. I was still travelling down to Sydney to do occasional work for maybe 10 days at a time. I was doing a bit of work up here. There was Covid for ages and I was home schooling the kids.
I’ve worked for the Byron Writers Festival, Blues Fest and many music festivals like Earth Frequency, Elements and Mushroom Valley. I do artist services on all this gigs like basically I just take care of the Musicians, their accommodation, food, get their booze riders to them, it’s pretty uncomplicated.
I was doing some project management for artist run spaces. I helped Megan Cope who was here in Lismore. She does these amazing frozen pieces which she suspends and it drips down. That was at Elevator Ari. I was the project manager for the grant that they got for Clirp. I’ve been doing some events here in The Quad. I did Flow and The Crossing with Seed Arts and just last week Bobby Alu. I had met Myki who was The Placemaking Officer here at The Quad at the time. Myki called me to say they were going away for 8 months and would I like their job for that time. Myki’s not coming back now but being a Council position they will still have to advertise it. It’s a great bunch of women I get to work with and it fits well with parenthood. I felt pretty inept for the first few months with all the spreadsheets and budgets and bureaucracy but now I’ve definitely got my groove.
I really love Lismore. It’s inclusive, it’s diverse, it’s Gay, it’s arty and it’s relaxed. I felt very at home straight away.”