A conversation, a free day at the Cultural Centre, and the first Moment Lounge.

The festival began as the Dubbo Women's Festival — and it began with a conversation, not a plan. Lorna Brennan was organising a mental health month event and asked me to do something for it. I told her about Susanne North — a Sydney Writer client of mine in Sydney who gave menopause talks and women's day events, and who I'd been wanting to bring to Dubbo. Lorna and I got talking, and somewhere in that conversation we decided to do the Dubbo Women's Festival.

The founding instinct was there from the start: why were there so many separate International Women's Day events in Dubbo, all drawing on the same speakers, venues and sponsors, when we could create the one space for everyone to come? So we built it — a free day of care, information and connection at the Western Plains Cultural Centre, with panels on the health topics nobody was talking about, lunch under the trees, and the first Moment Lounge, created by Erifili Davis and backed by our first believers and sponsors, Charnie Tuckey and Rose Prout. Built by Lorna, Joanne "Nurse Jo" Phillips and me (Sharon Quill).

It grew the way good things grow out here: by trust.

By 2026 it had become the Orana Every Woman Festival — 520 women, nearly 1,000 attendances, 40 events across seven days, women travelling from 50km and further, a sold-out finale at Crossroads, and recognition in the NSW Parliament.

"I drove three hours. I'd do it again. There's nothing like this anywhere else in regional NSW — and it matters that it exists here, in Dubbo."