“I grew up on a wheat and sheep farm in the Wheatbelt area. Around this age I spent my days helping my Dad round up sheep, changing the metal points on the scarifier to rip up the earth for seeding the wheat.
I was a bit of a tomboy, I was treated the same as my brothers, riding motorbikes and driving vehicles from the age of 11 around the farm, helping out in the shearing shed, catching and cooking Gilgies.
We would rear baby lambs and kangaroos whose mothers had either abandoned them or had been injured, this is one of them on my lap.
The Dam down from the house was our swimming pool and I spent 17 years travelling around 1.5 hours every day to get to and from the local school on the bus before I came to Perth to go to university and study nursing.
I was brought up to believe I could do anything I wanted in life.
It is abhorrent to me to think at the same age I am in this picture that children are incarcerated rather than supported to address the reasons why they are in the situations they end up in.
I implore everyone to get behind Social Reinvestment WA’s Raise the Age campaign.”
To read more about the Raise the Age WA campaign, click here.
