Kathy is a 58 year old lady with a life of adventure!
On my travels at a place somewhere along
the Oodnadatta Track we met some very extraordinary people, one of them I was
lucky enough to interview. Her name was Kathy, she currently lives in
Nunawading. She decided to move there when she met her husband-to-be. They both
lived a fair way away from each other and Nunawading was half way in-between
both, a pretty fair compromise if you ask
me.
An adventure of Kathy’s involved her and
her husband cross-country skiing for nine kilometres with all their gear on a
sled to a hut in the High Planes in Falls Creek. Their sled had all the gear and
they had to push it with them for the entire trip to the hut. The hut its self,
housed native bush rats that you had to keep all your food away from to avoid
them getting to friendly, but if you didn’t feed them they would nibble on your fingers and toes instead.
Presently if you were to ask what her job
is she would say“semi-retired,” but if you asked again she might enlighten you
further. She happens to own a coffee cart which she takes to shows and functions
serving top of the range coffee. She also owns (along with her hubby) a flock of
white doves. With such doves they take them to funerals and occasionally
weddings to release. Whatever you conceive them to represent is up to you.
People will usually hire one but sometimes more. But the secret to the doves is
the “homing function” that they are trained to do. They said that they usually
beat you home.
She happened to mention that one of her
most terrifying but incredible adventures was when; she was paddling down the
Mika Mika River in a rubber raft along with a few other people. Their boat
capsized in some of the rapids. She was trapped under the water with the current
pushing down on her and no matter how hard she tried to swim up she just
couldn’t get up for air. With the thought of death swimming in her brain the
adrenalin surged through her body allowing her access to super-human strength
and save her life.
Over her 58 years she has had many jobs.
Some of these jobs were working in the snow, as a maid, as a teacher and also
owned a ski travel business. She has worked in many a place; overseas, all
around Melbourne and a lot of places around Australia. She decided to do all
these jobs for the experience and for the thrill of it, because as I mentioned
briefly she is an Adventurer. Her dream job when she was growing up was to be a
plumber with her Dad, but as it was not socially acceptable to be a female
plumber at the time so her dream was
squashed.
Having so many jobs meant that she has
lived in many a different place, but as she is semi-retired she hasn’t moved in
a long time. She loves the city though, and if she was to pick a place to live
she says she would pick the city life.
The adventurous person she is her hobbies
include: cross country snow skiing, bush walking, water colour painting,
swimming, body boarding, surfing, ballroom dancing, badminton and
sea-kayaking.
One of coolest kayaking trips was in New
Zealand. She, her husband and a friend of theirs was paddling through Cook
Straight in their kayaks. But the cool twist was just that, a twist; the water
was twirling around like a vortex as well as going up and down with the waves.
What she remembered the most about the trip was her screaming the whole
time.
I hope you enjoyed my interview of Kathy,
and I think we can all agree her life was quite and
adventure!
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