I was born in Adelaide SA and briefly lived at Cherry Gardens before my family moved to Ardlethan in the Riverina area of NSW. I am the youngest of five and the fourth Daughter. My brother was 19 years my senior so a lot of learning was had from a very young age. I attended the Ardlethan Central School in two sections, one up until 3rd class and then again from 5th Class until leaving after gaining my Intermediate Certificate.
In 1961 I gained employment at The Commercial Banking Company of Sydney Limited at the Beckom Branch. This was 5 Miles from Ardlethan, there was a receiving office at Ardlethan operated a couple of days a week but the actual bank was at Beckom. I rode a pushbike to and from work each day.
In 1962 my Mum and Dad moved to Nowra NSW for Dad’s work and they immediately had communications with the Bank powers to have me transferred to Nowra as I was boarding and considered too young to be on my own! This took about 6 months. I met Rob Woolley at Church on the first week after I arrived in Nowra and I think you could say the rest is history. We have been married for near 58 years and have two children, three grandsons (two living) and one granddaughter.
I worked in an accountancy firm in Nowra after leaving the bank, there comes my love of working with figures and financials.
On coming to Canberra in 1985 I was employed as a Typist at the Australian Bureau of Statistics and many other Government Departments completing my working career responsible for Executive Development of the Senior Executive Service at Centrelink in 2001.
Retirement has been great and I have done many things which I will not bore you with.
We will now go to my Rotary Work.
I was familiar with Rotary the organization back in the Nowra days, which was for men! Rob joined in Canberra in 2000 and I was happy to attend meetings and help out as necessary. In 2009 Rob was District Governor Nominee and my Rotary life really started. I attended Rob’s training (and mine) in San Diago California in 2011 and fully immersed myself in working with Rob for his Governor year of 2011/2012, including raising money for a Partners project. I chose my project raising funds to give scholarships for Indigenous young people to study Midwifery through Australian Rotary Health. The scholarships were for $4000 and through a multi-prize raffle across the district we raised $16,000 for four scholarships.
At this time, I was also a member of Zonta International and my Club was Zonta Canberra Breakfast. I was also the Treasurer of the organization for three years. Zonta is focused on benefitting Women only. This is very commendable and absolutely of great value, but with my increased knowledge of how Rotary operated, I realized that I wanted to benefit the community in general, rather than focusing only on women.
In 2012 I joined the Rotary E-Club of Brindabella as a charter member and my position was Treasurer! I was also still a member of Zonta International, but resigned in June 2013.
In 2014 I was asked to look at running a Vocational Training project (Team) focusing on Child and Maternal Health. The project was finally under way in 2015 and Global Grants organized to bring Midwives from Pacific Island Countries to further develop their skills in Communication. This was conducted at the University of Canberra in conjunction with the Australian College of Midwives in Canberra. The program was conducted for three years with the Rotary Foundation Global grants, the District and a Rotary Club in Auckland in District 9920 . In total the three Global grants were for $240,000 in total, we had 35 Midwives from Fiji, Tonga, Kiribati, Cook Islands and the Solomon Islands visit and study at the Canberra University for 2 weeks each year for three years. They were all hosted by Rotarians in Canberra.
I have held District positions of Vocational Training and Polio Chairs and the positions of President and Treasurer for the Club.
