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Sisters are doin’ it for themselves
My mum Peta Goodwin is a phenomenal role model. She dances to the tune of the 1985 feminist anthem by Aretha Franklin and Annie Lennox. This is a thank you note to her. Mum was 19-years-old when she had me. She went straight back to full-time work (sole parent pension didn’t exist in 1972) and never received financial support from my father. We moved from New Zealand to Australia in 1975 and joined the hippie movement. Moving to a new country with a three-year-old wouldn’t have been easy. In the 1980’s, Mum grabbed a home loan opportunity for low-income earners and bought a block of land in Margaret River. We…
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Garden blossoms into rich new life
A couple of years ago I thought I may have to give up gardening. An old back injury was giving me constant grief and people were saying things like “Well, at your age, maybe you should stop doing…” The list included almost everything I enjoy doing except sleeping. I remembered times when my garden had, due to where I was living or what I was doing, consisted of a few plants in pots – and they hadn’t been my best times. I thought about my large block of land and what I would do with it if I couldn’t garden. I thought about what I would do with myself if…
