Meet one of the event managers of the Dubbo Women’s Festival! Lorna is does extraordinary things in our community, and since she’s not bit on blowing her own horn we’ve placed a few news items through her personal story here.

“Born and raised in Scotland, after finishing school in 1979, I studied for a Bachelor of Land Economics at Aberdeen University. I worked as a Land Agent with a rural firm and traipsed the length of Scotland carrying out assessments of properties affected by the North Sea Oil Pipeline.

Mid 1980’s I was married and migrated to Australia with a one-year-old. We spent time in and around Canberra, Gympie and Darwin finally stopping for a few years on an outback sheep station 100kms out of Brewarrina and far western NSW, now with two small children, several dogs and a 20-year-old Holden Station wagon!

We arrived just following the Nyngan Flood and the journey out to the station was an adventure in itself! Five years later, after having coped with floods, droughts, bushfires, giant mozzie plagues and a massive stock reduction program, we had been taught the meaning of resilience and self-reliance.

A short stint living in town in Bre, followed by a recuperative year back in Scotland catching up with technology, saw us all back in Darwin which brought its own set of challenges. My husband was working out on country shooting and processing wild boar for export whilst I managed the pig chillers in Humpty Doo.

Another year later saw us back in NSW. This time we were on a property out of Nyngan and I started working with the Bogan Bush Mobile, a mobile playgroup service that visited outlying towns and properties. I retrained as an Early Childhood professional and after a few years established a new service of Supported Playgroups which saw me travelling between Cobar and Lithgow.

By this stage my son was in High School in Nyngan and wanting to expand his opportunities we decided to send him to board in Dubbo during the week so he could attend school there. Shortly after this I took up another Supported Playgroup position based in Dubbo working for Uniting Care Burnside. I was establishing new groups in many marginalised communities in Dubbo and surrounding towns.

5 Years on and I was successful in my application to establish the Buninyong School as Community Centre the position I have held now for 18 years. This is a Department of Education position and I act as the Local Facilitator providing early education and support to families with children aged 0-5 years. Over the years I have seen huge growth and changes to the school and community. Dubbo has become a very important hub for New Migrants and following on from the COVID epidemic many more families are making the ‘tree change’ and moving out to the regions so the numbers of families with young children has grown enormously.

The centre continues to grow and diversify as the community needs change and I get tremendous satisfaction from working to support the hundreds of new families from all over the world who find their way to our door. Every day brings new challenges and new friends.

Dubbo has become a very colourful multi-cultural city and I feel very lucky to be able to play a part in supporting its residents to get the most out of living here with their young children”.

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