On Meeting Alice

Last week, I was asked to MC a joint forum for the Queensland Rural, Regional and Remote Women's Network and the National Council of Women of Queensland in a small hall in a small town outside Kingaroy. I love the South Burnett because - although I grew up in Bundaberg - that's where I consider my "mob" to be from, with fond memories of school holidays with cousins and favourite uncles and aunties. So, of course, I jumped at the chance.

The guest speaker was Alice Greenup (pictured left) author of Educating Alice. It was great to meet the dynamo behind the memoir - a Melbourne girl who overheard a conversation about a governess position on a remote cattle property in western Queensland. It was there where Alice caught the eye of a young jackaroo, got married and lived happily ever after, but not before Alice had to master the art of driving and learn the difference between a steer and a heifer.

'... in my world all of these brown-eyed, four-legged creatures were just called "cows".'

 It was on this property where Alice also came to learn where girlfriends stood.

'A girlfriend should know her place, Alice. First comes the mates, then the ute, then his hat, dogs, horses and last of all the girlfriend. Get that right and you might stick around. Jump the queue and you're history.'

Fortunately, it wasn't the handsome jackaroo who famously said this, but one of his mates - a little scorned, I think, by Alice's attentions elsewhere.
Educating Alice is a great book, full of action, drama and humour. But it is, above all, a most sincere memoir of hardships and triumphs on the land. And it's for this reason, that I was most keen to meet Alice - the Melbourne girl who, through sheer hard work and determination, became 2003 Australian Young Beef Achiever and won the Meat and Livestock Australia and Australian Women's Weekly Search for Australia's Most Inspiring Rural Women in 2006. Not bad, hey?
Alice enjoyed meeting students from Murgon State High School (pictured below) and Nanango State High, lovely young people, who Alice said were "the future".

The forum was designed to get rural women talking about issues that affect them, coming up with ideas and solutions and then hopefully get those ideas to the ears of policy-makers. For example, how rural women stand to benefit from the coalition's paid maternity-leave scheme, how to support one another in times of crisis (the South Burnett region is still recovering from two devastating floods in January 2011 and 2013), environmental and other issues.We also got to hear from Nanango author Liz Caffery who shared incredible photos and the story behind her magnificent coffee-table book Reflections: The Story of the 2011 South Burnett Floods and Recovery.
I got to meet some wonderful women, and the two men who were there, and took home a bounty of local produce and not one, but two, raffle prizes. I'd say it was well worth the drive.