WOW: Wise Older Women
“Wisdom That Grows Louder with Time.”
Welcome to WOW: Wise Older Women a podcast dedicated to raising the status of ageing women and dismantling the narratives that silence them.
Here, older women speak with authority, beauty, depth, and fire. Their stories challenge, inspire, and illuminate.
In a world that too often ignores, isolates, or diminishes older women, we choose to listen. To revere and celebrate the brilliance, courage, humour and tenderness they bring along with plenty of high‑vibration wisdom carried in their words.
These conversations aren’t just stories, each one of them is a teaching. A personal map from the past, forging the way ahead, full of magic, medicine and momentum.
This storytelling series presents ageing not as decline, but as ascent. It’s a platform where older women don’t need to hide. This is where they are honoured, uplifted, heard and held; with reverence, respect, and wonder.
Their voices are powerful, their wisdom is vibrant, and their stories are a gift to us all.
Welcome to the podcast. Settle in. Let their voices guide you.
WOW: Wise Older Women
S1 Ep2: Lilith Rocha
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
One of Australia’s most respected astrology columnists, writer for Women's Weekly, published poet, model, survivor, teacher to Hawaiian Hula Troupe: Mana Aloha and ongoing astrology columnist for the Echo newspaper.
Nothing fills her heart like the islands of Hawaii and the principles of aloha, but Lilith also shares traumatic events that shaped her life and reshaped her beautiful face.
Lilith also talks openly about the planning of her own funeral party after being told by 'the voice' she would die at 82, her current age!
This interview is interwoven with audio from her Vagina Conversations performance, live on stage at the Byron Theatre, to which she received a well-deserved standing ovation.
Traditional storytelling at its best with wisdom and knowledge shared through the age-old art of conversation.
This is a CBF grant funded project in collaboration with BayFM Byron and Plantation Studios.
Executive producer Rasela Torise.
Music www.purple-planet.com
First of all, it was racism, and then it was sexism, and now it's ageism. So I've got to fight three battlefronts.
SPEAKER_01Wisdom's not something you can buy a book and learn. It's not something you can grab off Instagram. It's not something you can you can buy in a course.
SPEAKER_07I needed that courage when I was being threatened, kidnapped, raped, almost murdered.
SPEAKER_05As I'm speaking now, the tears just rolling down my cheeks. Tears of utility. You can't change. So important.
SPEAKER_03And the work is so much now is actually supporting your knowing. Your wisdom. In that there's a possibility.
SPEAKER_06The most important activism right now is information for yourself and others. And that's why I'm so happy to be on a community radio initiative to raise the status of older women. Because older women in almost every community carry knowledge and gifts and experience that are of real value in the real world, in the economy, in the culture that we all care about.
SPEAKER_08Welcome to a new series, Wow, Wise Older Women, a CBF grant-funded project created to raise the profile and status of women aged 55 to 85. Across six episodes, we celebrate the profound value of older women and their essential role in society as wisdom keepers, culture carriers, and the voices of lived experience. Through intimate, thoughtful conversations, this series honours the knowledge that only time can teach. In this episode, we meet Lilith Rocha, one of Australia's most respected astrology columnists, a writer for Women's Weekly, a published poet, a model, a survivor, and a beloved teacher of the Hawaiian hula troupe Mana Aloha. Her heart is forever tied to Hawaii and the principles of Aloha, which infuse her life and her work. She continues to share her astrological insights as long-standing columnist for the Echo newspaper. Lilith speaks with remarkable honesty about the traumatic events that shaped her life and transformed her face, offering a rare and courageous window into survival, identity, and self-reclamation. She also reflects on the moment she was told by The Voice that she would die at 82, her current age, and how that prophecy inspired her to plan her own funeral party with humour, clarity, and an unshakable sense of self. This conversation is interwoven with audio from her powerful vagina conversations performance, where she received a well-deserved standing ovation. This series brings you traditional storytelling at its finest. Wisdom shared through the age-old art of conversation. Join us as we listen, learn, and celebrate the voices of women whose insight enriches us all.
SPEAKER_07Okay, my name's Lilith Roscha. And we're at my home, Casa Aloha, in Byron Bay, which I built 22 years ago. Can't quite looking at it imagine how I ever got that together. But I did. And we're backing up onto national forest, so the garden is full of snakes and birds and some wallabies, which is great. Lots of bush turkeys.
SPEAKER_08So we're going to be hearing an amazing speech that you gave as part of the vagina conversations. Can you tell us a little bit about what the vagina conversations are and why you think that you were invited to speak on it?
SPEAKER_07I participated in the 2023 version, it's on every year. What it's about is firstly raising a lot of money for women's shelters and women who need help, financial help. So it supports a lot of those charities, which is wonderful. We've raised thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, and that feels good. Every year Zenith Virago asks ten people with vaginas to participate in telling a vagina-related story about themselves.
SPEAKER_08Which parts of the 82 years of your life did you choose to put into that story?
SPEAKER_07Every year I would see these women be so upfront and revealing about themselves, and I'd come out completely admiring of them, thinking, Oh, I do wonder why Zenith hasn't asked me, but I'm so glad she hasn't. That would just be so confronting. And then of course, one year she did. And I came out and said, Oh, that was so fantastic. And she said, Oh, do you want to be in next year's? And I went, Yes. Came home and thought, what am I going to talk about?
SPEAKER_08It was incredible. I hear that you had a standing ovation, rightly so. It was such a beautiful and powerful story of your life, and much of which hopefully we're going to be able to capture in the next hour of this interview.
SPEAKER_07I was born 80 plus years ago. Melbourne, 1942, middle of the Second World War, before television, computers, and mobiles. Tonight I'm going to honour the three female archetypes that assisted me through the classic cycles of childhood, young womanhood, old womanhood.
SPEAKER_08Can we start with, apart from the vagina conversations, from your speech, which you wrote and memorized and performed? And you talk about when Sheena, the She Hero, the Superwoman, came into your life.
SPEAKER_07In the 1940s, superheroes came in paper comics. Men like The Phantom and Superman. But where were the superwoman? Tarzan had the best outfit, but what did his wife do? Dust monkeys. Then, to my rescue, came the world's first comic strip female superhero, Sheena. An orphan raised by wild animals in the jungle?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_07Not Tarzan's missus or anyone's accessory. I ain't no Mrs. T. Don't confuse me with Jane Watson stuck in a grass hut. Picking knits off boy while T-Man wrestles pythons for the cameras in his big old leather lap lap. Talk to the animals, I slide right inside 'em, slashing deadly mamba venom, flashing flamingo pink against heaven, screeching hyena, hysterics, skittering, many legged along a leaf. King of the apes, big chief orangutan man, bossing round a bunch of monkeys. I rather lie with my fang family in a cheetah skin bikini chewing springbok thigh. Hell, I'm Sheena, queen of the whole goddamn jungle.
SPEAKER_08Sheena, the she hero, the superwoman, came into your life. Can you reflect back a bit on that?
SPEAKER_07When I was little, I was the first girl in the family. My dad, of course, at that time it was the forties. Right after the war, he would have liked a boy, but he was happy with me. But I think I became a tomboy to please him. And there weren't any female role models. We had comics, paper comics then, that all the kids used to read, and they were, you know, Superman and Batman and unlikely looking guys in tights, and there weren't any women until the world's first female comic strip heroine, which was Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. That was what I wanted to be. My dad was an avid reader, and I could read when I was three. I just loved reading because it took me out of the everyday into another world. It was so magical for me. So I read everything comics, you know, poetry, anything I could get my hands on.
SPEAKER_08Were you looking for some kind of escape at that time of your life?
SPEAKER_07Yes, I was. I was born during the war, there was rationing, everything was kind of tense and dreadful. We didn't know if my dad would come back from the Air Force. All of that, it was a hard time. I was born in 42, so the war was still on then.
SPEAKER_08Do you think all of that reading shaped the writer that you are and have been through a lot of your life? I guess it did.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. It was just that way of entering other worlds that was so magical for me.
SPEAKER_08Let's go back to free writing and maybe just discuss what life was like at school. I know that you felt quite isolated. How do you describe your early years, your schooling years?
SPEAKER_07Oh, I started to cry when you asked that question. My mum wasn't a Catholic and my dad was a Catholic, and in those days, the Catholics used to call that a mixed marriage, as though my mum had come from another planet. She wasn't allowed to wear a bride's dress in the church. They had to get married in a back room. And when I went to school, I had a lot of things going against me. I had the fact that my mum wasn't a Catholic. I didn't have the Catholic required long plaits. My mum had given me a kind of Prince Valiant haircut, which I still have today, really. I was younger than anyone at school, and I topped the class. So all of those things didn't really make life easy for me. And when I was very young, the nuns asked me to stand up and tell them what I was. I didn't know what they meant, but I really got that it was a trick question. And they said, Tell us what you are. Are you a boy or a girl? Because you haven't got girls' hair. So they made me sit with the boys. I didn't have any friends at school at all because the boys didn't want to know me and the girls wanted me to take messages to the boys. So I was a complete outsider at school. I couldn't wait to leave.
SPEAKER_08How did you cope with it or did you not cope? Was it later in life that you realized that this kind of isolation was going on or sense of isolation?
SPEAKER_07Well, I didn't have it once I'd got out of that school, which was just the sort of primary school. Then I went to Catholic Ladies College, and by that time I was bigger and I could cope and I was still top of the class. I was a bigger girl by then. Young Jennifer growing up really needed Sheena because pussy powers not a hot topic in suburban in suburban Melbourne in the 1950s. My mum Joyce's sex talk consisted of don't let boys touch you down there. Vaginas apparently being the equivalent of Australia on the world stage, the land down number. So when taking Sheena as my role model got me expelled from my next school, Catholic Ladies College, I left home.
SPEAKER_08And when did Jennifer become Lilith?
SPEAKER_07Can you tell us about that story? I can, because then you couldn't leave home until you were 18. That was legal. I just didn't ever feel like a Jennifer. My friend who worked at the Mitchell Library, you know, we were writing lists. I had all these lists of exotic names, Jezebel, Cleopatra, whatever. And I opened this picture book and saw a picture that was titled This Beautiful Shot, so reminiscent of the legend of Lilith. Which I didn't know what the legend of Lilith was. I just went, What a beautiful name. That's it, I'm sick of the lists. I ran down to the solicitor, paid the money, changed the name, rang up my friend and said, you know, look it up and tell me what this legend is. And she ran rang back and said, Bad luck, kid. It's like being called Satan or Lucifer or the Devil. Too late. I'd paid the money. When you learnt about that, did something feel like it fitted? Yes, I I was never really impressed with all the good girls, and I did quite like the bad girls of history. So I just thought, well, I've taken it for a reason. It had such an impact on me when I saw it that I thought, well, let's see what happens. And now I had the name of this really scary being with a really bad rep of some kind of evil demon. And Jewish boyfriends wouldn't take me home to meet mum because it was a bad name in the Jewish religion. According to which, Lilith was Adam's first wife before Eve. A failed experiment. Who thought that sex should be equal opportunity and whether she always have to go on the bottom? She didn't go down well with a mother god or Adam. So Lilith left the Garden of Eden to make her home somewhere in the Mother Darkness, the original difficult woman. Although considered by some contemporary feminists as the first independent woman to stand up and challenge an oppressive system. Thank you, Lilith. And they would say, Oh, you've got to change it, you know, to something else. You'll always have bad luck. You'll never get married, and you'll never have children with that name. And I'd say, Don't you put the Jewish curse on me, and it just made me more stubborn. But the truth is, I have never married and I've never been able to have children. Go figure. I don't really think they jinxed me. I'm not going to um take that on. And it's not that I haven't married because I haven't been asked. I just always thought that I would get bored.
SPEAKER_08That's the real reason. You could have married a few then.
SPEAKER_07I could have, but I didn't. Don't think I don't love men. I do, and continue to be loved by them. It took my whole life and so many sister circles and so much women's work to finally understand vaginal solidarity. You said that you left home when you were 18. Yeah, I got a job working as the um secretary for MeAngin, which was Melbourne University's literary magazine, and it was run by a very wild communist called Clem Christensen. He started it and he was married to the head of the Russian department. And I walked in one day and there was Wheel and the Wrecker, which was a big wrecking ball, you know, like the Marley Saras thing, swinging around buildings and there was dust everywhere. And he yelled at me, sit down and take a letter, you're hired. And it was so exciting. I went right oh, isn't this exciting? Fantastic. You know, people were running in. He was refusing to be moved from the building until the university gave him a new office.
SPEAKER_08There was also um a lot of art in your life, wasn't there? Did art become something that was a way of expressing you in yourself, or did you literally walk into it?
SPEAKER_07Well, I always hung out with artists and I did literally walk into it in in Adelaide because I hitchhiked around like everyone did in those days between Sydney and Melbourne, wherever. And I'd hitchhiked to Adelaide. And that night at a party, the head of the art department asked me if I'd like to model. Well, I thought they meant my face because I was used to being photographed. So I appeared with a terrible hangover the next day and walked into a room with a man without his clothes on and went, Oh, sorry. And they said, No, no, come in. Did you bring a dressing gown? And I went, What? I thought they want me to take my clothes off. Oh. And I quickly kind of ran through a series of things I might do, faint, run out. But I'd only just arrived in Adelaide. You know, it's gonna look pretty silly. So I just thought, oh, it's easier to do it than do any of these plans. So I did. And then I modelled at art schools for probably 30 years after that.
SPEAKER_08And what was the experience like when you were able to drop your self-consciousness?
SPEAKER_07I dropped it pretty quickly, actually. But you know, screwed my eyes tight for about five minutes, and then I slowly opened them. No one was looking at me, they were all looking at their drawings. So that made it pretty easy. It dropped away pretty quickly. Like the robe.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_08Did you continue to model?
SPEAKER_07That was a big part of your life, wasn't it? Yeah, probably from about 18 to about 58. Less so when I moved up here because I left the art schools and things, but I still did modeling for particular artists up here. And was there another reason that you went to Adelaide? I was hitchhiking with somebody and I was terribly sick of being a virgin because all the people around me had not been virgins, let's say, for some time. And I felt like the oldest virgin on the planet. I was getting a little bit tired of the fumbling boys, you know, I tried. I just thought, oh, they don't really know what they're doing. And so I picked out a guy for the job. How can you describe this guy and and why? What made him different? He was called Rudy the Belgian, and he was described by the Push, who were the people I was hanging around with, the Sydney Push, as um a premier pants man. And I guess that meant that he knew what he was doing in bed. Women liked him, he was a lovely guy, but I really liked him too.
SPEAKER_08You mentioned that you love to read and you've been reading since you were three years old. All of those words and and stories. Now you are a writer. When did you begin to write and what was it that you first wrote about?
SPEAKER_07Well, I used to win all the writing prizes at school. You know, we'd be asked to write something and I'd always get the prizes because I loved writing and it was easy for me. But I suppose my first real job was in Melbourne working for a paper that Looning was on. I think it was called the Melbourne Observer, something like that, Yonks ago. And Loonick was just starting out, but he was obviously going to be wonderful. He was so much fun. Everyone knew that I was interested in astrology, so they asked me to do well, it wasn't an astrology column, it was like a couple of pages, and I could write whatever I like, so I could be as creative as I wanted to be. Where does your love of astrology come? Did you ever study it? I did. I wanted to be in astrology when I was eighteen and and there weren't a lot around. It wasn't like there's a lot of astrologers around. It was kind of strange and weird at that time. I thought that's what I want to be in life, and so I rang up the head of the Astrological Association in Melbourne, who is an old gentleman in a suit, and I asked him if I could learn from him. And he wasn't all that keen, but he agreed. And so I turned up for my first lesson, and there were no computers. I had an exercise book and I had to write lines of the symbols for the planets and the glyphs for the star signs, and I fainted. It was so surprising. And I dusted myself off and said, I'll come back next week. And the same thing happened the next week. I looked at the page, all the things ran around like ants, and I fainted. And it was so embarrassing to both of us that I just said, Look, it looks like I'm not supposed to do this. And he looked relieved. And I went away and I understood that I wasn't supposed to be a working astrologer. But that was absolutely correct. Because about a year later, then I got asked to write for the paper. And writing astrology is what I really enjoy.
SPEAKER_08Uh even today you still continue to write. You've written in so many magazines and publications. But you didn't only write about astrology, did you? I know that you studied also naturopathy and you've had a lot to do with well-being as well.
SPEAKER_07Yes, I got a naturopath's degree from Dorothy Hall in Sydney, and I worked as a naturopath in Bondage Junction for quite a while. I was the health writer for Simply Living for Some Time. I mean, a lot of print media is no longer around. So I've become typecast as an astrology columnist. But I used to write about festivals and travel and food, all the things that were in those lovely print magazines.
SPEAKER_08Have you done much online writing? Is that something that's a an option to you?
SPEAKER_07It doesn't appeal to me at all. People early on said, Oh, you need to be online. I've always liked print. Online just doesn't interest me.
SPEAKER_08Have you ever thought about, and I'm sure you have, and I'm sure many people have suggested this writing a book about yourself?
SPEAKER_07Well I write every day in a diary. Whether it ever gets published or not, I don't really care. I think I've said a lot about my life in my poetry book, which I didn't even plan to publish. I just went to poetry workshops and you get a brief, write a poem about this, and a lot came out about my family and my life. And then all of a sudden they said we want to publish them. I went, Oh, I might not have been quite so honest had I thought. But it came out. A lot of work to do a memoir. There are many on the market. I don't know.
SPEAKER_08But there's not many like you, Lilith.
SPEAKER_07We'll see, we'll see.
SPEAKER_08You've had something that's accompanied you throughout your life as well, haven't you? And that's something that you describe as the voice. Can you elaborate a bit more on that?
SPEAKER_07Hard thing to talk about, really, because I don't know whether everyone has this voice or not. It's not something that I can just dial up with a question and ask. It doesn't work like that. It's always come out of the blue, unexpected, sometimes with quite startling or painful news, but every message it's given me has always turned out to be in my best interest. So I trust it.
SPEAKER_08Your 82 years, which you've recently just reached, congratulations, what an amazing milestone. And still looking incredibly vibrant with these beautiful blonde highlights through your flaming red hair and your gorgeous darkened eyes. You always look an absolute picture and a treat, Lilith. You're a work of art. But did the voice mention anything about this time of your life?
SPEAKER_07Thank you for the compliments. Well, that's very sweet. Yeah, it did. Really a long time ago. I woke up one morning and the voice said, You'll die at 82. Some of my friends have accepted this, some don't want to. Fair enough. So I've just made a pact with them that they stop nagging me about about it and say, okay, if I have an 83rd birthday party, you can all stand up at the mic and say you're right, okay?
SPEAKER_08How do you feel? Because I came here today, you mentioned that you weren't really feeling too good, but we would sit and we'd see where this interview goes, and you said, well, maybe this is it.
SPEAKER_07Well, yes, what do I know? I'm 82 in what, nine days or something like that. And uh yesterday I woke up and I couldn't breathe properly. So yeah, we'll see what the doctor says. Sounds like walking pneumonia, but what do I know?
SPEAKER_08Let's continue walking through your story. I understand that something very traumatic, particularly traumatic, happened in your life. Can you first of all paint the picture of what your life was like at that time before you go in to tell the story of what happened?
SPEAKER_07Okay, I was 30, which is the time of a classic astrological cycle of your Saturn return. It's kind of like the middle crossroads of your life, where very simplistically put, you either go on the way that you've always gone on, or the opportunity comes to make a radical change. And because I'd been a model and I'd always had a voluptuous figure and wanted needed to stay slim, I developed a speed habit. Not the injectory kind of tart that people do these days. It was legal and you could just go to the doctor and say, I need to be slimmer because I've got jobs coming up, and so you get a hundred dexadrine and two repeats. So I took Dexadrine for ten years. But in that time when other people were getting married and having kids, I was like the whirling party girl. And when I was thirty, I was travelling through Sydney on my way back from Bali, and uh I had old push friends there from earlier in my life, and I was staying with them. They were all kind of radical people. And I didn't really understand or know even what was going on in Victoria Street, and I was staying in Victoria Street. And one night, I think the night before I was to come back to Melbourne, I woke up and there was a person standing at it at the end of my bed and he proceeded to beat me to death. That's where the voice came in really helpfully because it said quite clear because I was screaming and struggling and my face was dissolving. And the voice said, You haven't got much time left. You'll die very soon unless you stop struggling and say this. And it gave me the words to say, and that saved my life. I had to have complete uh facial surgery reconstruction, but the police didn't seem to give me any any idea. I didn't know what it was, it felt like an unprovoked attack. But years later, I picked up a book. What was it called? The King of the Cross, I think, by I think it might be Max Dupan. And I thought, oh, do I really want to read a book about Abe Saffron? And as I read it, I just started going hot and cold because I realized that I'd been caught in the middle, not the middle, but before Juanita Nielsen was killed. I'd been inadvertently caught up in the Winita Nielsen saga. And one of my dance students said, I really like doing forensic searching. She said she searched for Abe Saffron's hitman. And well, you'll cut this out if it's offensive. I don't mean to offend any Maori people because I've got lots of Maori friends. That's how I knew the guy was Maori, even though he didn't even open his mouth. He was very good looking. And he laughed as he did his work. He killed one person from this this particular block of apartments, and the other one became a vegetable. I didn't recover. But I recovered. I think he probably left me for dead. I had more life to live. Can I ask you what those words were that the voice told you to say that saved your life? Yeah, the voice is always very simple, very clear. It was like, it's okay, it's alright. But you can stop now. And I managed, I could still, because my teeth were very broken and my jaws, I managed to say those if you and then I think I fainted on his shoulder. But I stopped struggling, and I can remember like I collapsed onto him and I said these words into his ear. Perhaps he thought they were my dying words, I don't know. But it did save my life.
SPEAKER_08And how were you first treated when you arrived at the at the hospital? Do you remember much about that time?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I was blind, and I didn't know if I was permanently blind because I was in terrible shock. I could see nothing. The poor young men who are on the desk, I could hear them talking and they were saying, Oh, I don't know, let's send a home. Well, I didn't have a home. It was my friend's blood-spattered room. I didn't want to go back there. And I heard this marvellous voice come in, again, the voice, and it was full of confidence. And it came in and said, Can I have my patient's papers, please? And I went, That voice, come over here, come here, please, immediately. And the voice came over because I could see nothing. And I said, Please help me. I'm blind. I don't know if I'm permanently blind. They're trying to send me home. Please keep me in hospital and help me. And the voice looked at my input sheet and said, You don't have to worry about a thing because you're my patient now. And so I fainted again. And he turned out to be the top plastic surgeon in Sydney who'd retired and was coming back to St. Vincent's. He wasn't even a doctor anymore, he was a mister, and he did a fantastic job.
SPEAKER_08He sure did. How does something like that affect your life? What kind of help was available to you to not only recover physically but mentally and emotionally? I mean, that's traumatic.
SPEAKER_07Well, you know, I was 30, so that's a long time ago. It would be in the early 70s. There wasn't a whole lot of everything going on like there is now. I'm eternally grateful to the Australian government. What they offered me was a a lump sum payout as a victim of an unsolved crime, because I could never find the guy. Or I could go on a disability pension. And I knew that I was in no state to handle a lump sum of money. What was it called then? It was called the invalid pension. So you were an invalid person, and that really gave me the time to recover. I didn't have to worry. I had the rent paid, let's say. So I'm very, very grateful that I had that. I don't think I went to counselling. It just took the time it took.
SPEAKER_08Do you think it's carried throughout your life?
SPEAKER_07Does it ever resurface? Are there moments? Look, there's still moments. I'm here, I'm right up against the forest. Anyone could walk into my house or get over the fence. If I hear rattling on the roof, yeah, I wake up and the old terror is there, but it's it's kind of once removed now. I know what it is. I know it's a possum or the cat. I know it's not a person, but there's yes, that just spark comes up. I think it always will, but it's not bad anymore.
SPEAKER_08Where did you go from there? Did you end up going back to Melbourne and did you ever write about this as a as a form of therapy?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I wrote a poem in the in my poetry group, and I kept writing it and writing it, and my brilliant teacher and editor, when she was publishing the book, kept going, Lil, this is a pivotal poem in your life. It's not there yet. So I'd take it away, because I I don't mind feedback. I'd take it away, I'd work with it. I must have written it about, I don't know, a dozen times, and she kept saying, Not there yet. And I went, I'm losing the interest in writing it. I'm like getting bored with it. I said, I'll try once more. And I took it away and I wrote it from the killer's point of view. Because I'd been writing it from my point of view. I wrote it once from the killer's point of view, I gave it to her, and she said, That's it. So yeah. But it was the process of writing it over and over again, I think that was a kind of therapy. When menopause laid me flat, I was taken in Hawaii to pay respects to the volcano goddess Pelle, who Hawaiians revere as an elemental force, both destructive and regenerative. A powerful, passionate personality who left her original family to find a home in Hawaiian volcanoes. And while her fiery eruptions are magnificent, looking at the aftermath, the devastated acreage of hard black lava felt like my life at that time burnt out. And then, like little miracles everywhere coming up through that tarry crust with these dozens, hundreds of luminescent, iridescent, fluorescent, tiny green, curved ferns. They were curled like little fetuses and they were just radiating and glistening with the promise of new life. And in that image of rebirth, Pelle came through for me at the third turning of my life cycle, and I've been dancing hula for her ever since. I went to Hawaii when I was 50 and I was going through menopause.
SPEAKER_08Menopause only just being spoken about rather than it being this thing that no one talks about. Was there anybody around at that time well that you felt that you could share what you were going through with?
SPEAKER_07Not really. I went to a gay doctor who was very lovely and prescribed hormones, HRT, because I mean I guess from his point of view it would be lovely to stay young. I hated them and didn't take them after the first month, I suppose. I just went, no, I don't like this. It feels weird. Why? What was the feeling? I was outrageously horny, but not in a natural way, in a kind of fake way, because I guess it was like a male hormone, and I I suppose the one thing it did give me was an understanding of what it must be like for men. I came away with that after a month because I thought this is just gross. This is a horrible feeling. It feels uncontrollable, kind of a bit rapid. And I thought, is this what happens to some men? Do men have to cope with this? So I suppose that was the upside of it.
SPEAKER_08We spoke about your time in Hawaii and your time with Palais and what you saw. Did you feel like that was actually some kind of rebirth? Did you feel like you came back to the Byronshire in a different headspace?
SPEAKER_07Yes, I did. I didn't really quite know why I'd gone, but once I saw Palais Fields and the ferns growing, I relaxed and I knew why I was there, and then I just started to enjoy Hawaii, meet Hawaiians, um, interview them. I had a hairdo. It was in the Boyd George days, so um I had a Sydney hairdresser and I had probably my most extraordinary hairdro, which was dreadlocks that were sewn in and plaits. So I looked like a physical manifestation of Palais. And I didn't really realise this for a while because I just thought Hawaiians were so wonderful. Everything I asked for in my naive, Aussie way, not understanding the culture, because I knew nothing about it. Um I'd say, Oh, can we do this? Can I do this? Can I meet this person? And they'd be a breath and they'd look at each other, and then they would take me. And after a while I noticed the look, so I said, You're gonna have to tell me about the look. They said, What look? What what? I said, Every time I ask for something, you all look at each other, and then you agree, what it what is that look about? And they said, It's the Pele hair. You're like a quinoa. A quino lao means an earthly body. It could be a plant, it could be an animal, but it's an earthly representation of that energy. So I had the Pele energy. So people don't say no to Pele. How fortunate was I? And I only s really, really understood this later, years later, how fortunate I was to meet people who were like the national treasures of Hawaii. I studied Polynesian culture over there. I met people who are dead now who were just revered in the culture. So I got so fortunate that I got a really good foundation and grounding in understanding the culture because these were the people who were keeping it alive. The history of Hawaii is that the hula was banned, the language was banned, and these were people dedicated to reviving it. But mainly I was introduced to the hula, and before that I had been a belly dancer, and I thought, oh well, maybe I could do the hula because I noticed that Hawaiians were really interested in old people dancing. Plus, it's the only dance that I'd come across that follows a script, and as a writer, a dance that follows a script, I just went, oh, this is for me.
SPEAKER_08And when you say that, do you mean that each movement relates to a word or a place or a tradition or a part of a culture?
SPEAKER_07Yes, each movement is the physical expression of this part of the story, however, the choreographer expresses it.
SPEAKER_08How did you find your way into Hula? Was it by watching and observing? And when did you first start to dance?
SPEAKER_07Well, I went to workshops over there with Kumahula, who are they're like the professors of Hula. They have to be able to not only dance, they have to be able to sing, play the ukulele, the guitar, they have to be able to chant, they have to speak Hawaiian. It's really a lifelong dedication because Hula's been called the unwritten history of Hawaii, because before there were books, everything was in Hula. The chants and the movements of Hula were the books of Hawaii. So a lot of memory was involved.
SPEAKER_08Coming back to the Byron Shire, obviously it had awoken something in you, some kind of eruption of thought and feeling and emotion in it as well. How did you begin to express the beautiful dance of hula here in Byron?
SPEAKER_07Well, it was hard at first without any teachers, and um I went along to a ukulele club that an American guy called Dan Roman had started at the Suffolk Park pub, and it was really for ukulele learning. But I was on the computer all day fiddling around. I actually wanted to move my body, and I was a pretty hopeless ukulele player anyway. I really just thought that I might meet a hula teacher there, but I didn't. And then they were doing something for the Bangalore School or something, and I thought, you know what, these ukulele players are calling out for some haula dances. So I asked if anybody would like to join me, and I would choreograph a haula, which is a bit daring, and we did. Or we might have done one something I learned in Hawaii, whatever. Anyway, up we got, and I had a trio called the Hula Heenys, because um, you know, Australians like to shorten things, and we were the hulawahenies, and it just got shortened to the hula heenies. So um yeah, we danced together for a couple of years.
SPEAKER_08And that expanded, didn't it, into quite a large troupe.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, it did. Um that was the voice again when I was um lying in John Flynn Hospital after a hip replacement. The voice said, You're going back to Byron to start a Hall of Troop. And I went, Oh please. Excuse me, I'm 70, and I have to have another hip replacement in a few months. What? And the voice just said, think about it, because it never talks much. It's just like three or four words, that's it. Boom, download. And each time I thought about it, I smiled. It's brought so much joy to my life.
SPEAKER_08And at the moments you still have a troupe and you do so much just out of the love of dancing and sharing. You have a very special monthly gig that you go to, don't you? Which just brings so much joy to the receiver of this. Do you want to share a bit about that?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, sure. It's our favorite job. I mean, we do we do a lot of um community stuff for nothing because there aren't isn't any funding. We do love to be paid out there. Um, we like to be hired for weddings, parties, and um celebrations of life, which we do as well. But yes, this particular gig is our favourite because it's for someone um who was born with cerebral palsy and given a life expectancy of two years. And we've just celebrated his 34th birthday. He is in palliative care, and we were hired when he went into palliative care by his mum because he thinks he's Hawaiian and he looks Hawaiian, but he can't ever get to Hawaii because of his severe incapacity and you know, enormous wheelchair, he can't speak, he can't eat, he's severely disabled, but he loves music, he loves hula, he loves chanting. So we've been hired. His mother has chosen to pay us to bring Hawaii to him once a month for as long as he lives. All the girls say we do this job for nothing. They don't have to, so that's good. We do an hour concert for him once a month. Because we can't dance like full-on for an hour. I can hire musicians who get him to sing. It's not singing like normal singing, but it's his version of singing and he loves it. So we have ten minutes of music and singing and ten minutes of horn for the whole hour. Yeah, we love it.
SPEAKER_08How are you feeling in your 82nd year? How did you celebrate your 82nd birthday this year?
SPEAKER_07Well, normally every other year I put on a party, I hire musicians, I have dancing girls, lots of food and everything, and this year because I thought it would be my last, I feel it would will be my last year. I didn't feel like doing that. I thought, oh, that could be a bit I I might feel a bit weird putting on my last party. I don't feel like doing that. So it's been so much better because when I do that, I'm being the hostess and I'm I don't get that much time to sit down with people. You know, I'm organizing where the dances are going, who's going on next, blah di blah. But this time, because I said to my friends, um, well, if you want to organise something, do. And this time I've been able to sit down with people. And if it's the last time I see them, fine. We've had a time where we've actually sat down and talked to each other, which wouldn't happen at a big party. So I think it was a good decision and I'm really enjoying it.
SPEAKER_08And you also said that you were considering writing your funeral plan, was that right? Rather than organising your 82nd birthday this year?
SPEAKER_07Oh yes, that was on that was on Good Friday. I had planned because we'd met with the funeral director and she's fantastic and now I've got all these things and forms I have to fill out. And someone said, Oh, would you put on a party for Taj Mahal and his musicians? And I thought, well, that's a big ass kind of day when the shop's shut and whatever. Leave it with me. I sat down and I thought about would I like to fill out the funeral form or have an entertainment, you know, with um seven new exotic strangers. So it was a bit of a no-brainer, and I said yes. But then Taj Mahal got sick. After I'd organised the whole thing, I get a call at one o'clock. We're on at two. I've got dancing girls organized, because Taj has a I've met Taj before, he's a lovely guy, and he's not inconsiderate. So at one o'clock I get the call that no one can reach him, not even his manager, he's not answering any calls. He's completely locked away. So it's looking pretty much like he's not coming. There's masses of food, everybody's bought, the dancing girls are arranged. And I went, um, guys, looks like the guest of honour's not arriving. It was only a dozen people because everyone has already had their plans, Easter plans. So I said, Looks like I'm the guest of honour and I'm having a birthday party after all. And everyone laughed and was gracious, and we had a party, and the girls danced, and yeah, I had a party despite myself. Thank you, Taj.
SPEAKER_08So are you open to talking about what you want to have at your own funeral? Because I know in this area we have Zenith Virago, who I know is a a friend of yours as well, and she's so big on having discussions and talking about all of these things and letting people know what it is that you want and making the plans and how that also prolongs people's lives, the quality of their lives, you know, people that are really at the end of them. If somebody was to ask me what do you think Lilith's funeral would be like, I would just think it would be a burst of colour and celebration, and everybody would have to wear the most vibrant outfit they could find and yeah, play music and dance.
SPEAKER_07Thank you for reminding me of the dress code. Well, we just had a meeting um a couple of weeks ago with um Zenith's recommendation for a funeral director who was wonderful. I'll give um Hailey Janet um of Paper Bark Death Care a plug here because I asked her to come and um sit down with me and my the executor of my will, who's my best friend, and talk us through it. Because she's the expert. There were things I didn't know, you know. Do you really have to have a viewing? I just went, Oh well, do I have to do that? And she said, Well, really for your friends. I said, I have to have the viewing for my friends. Okay. Right, we'll do that. And then there was choice of coffin, you know. I said, Well, what have you got? She said, cardboard and your friends decorated. I said, No, they've got enough to do anyway. Let's not do that, so wrap up in paper bulk. And the good thing was that I can be buried. I've always wanted to be buried. It's not great for the environment doing cremation. And when I did Zenis course, I saw a body cremated, and it's yes, I'm a fire sign, it's very dramatic. But I have much more connection with the earth. I think it's the least I can give back is what's left of me to the to the worms. So I'm very happy to do that. So we went up and had a look at the um Byron Cemetery, which is very peaceful and beautiful, and I've got a friend who lives next door who can put a flower on the grave. I'm very happy about that. And then she told me that she's used to this stuff, I hadn't thought it through, that you have the thing at the cemetery, and then you go straight on to the party. So you have like the lowering of the body into the ground, this is great, everyone has a cry. Then they go out and do the Irish thing and celebrate. So this is really good. I've got it like a flow happening.
SPEAKER_08Probably one of the only things that people often talk about or know what they want is music at their funeral.
SPEAKER_07Oh, well, I haven't really I've got a whole list on the computer. I'm gonna have to look through it. Uh yes, poetry. I'd love people reading poetry. I just found a fabulous death poem yesterday, which is so good. Called Death a Love Song. Oh, it's about this woman who's invited out by Death to dinner, and she's sort of eating all her favourite things and licking the cream, and then Death gives her a kiss, and she said she's always just loved a man who could take her breath away with a kiss. It's a beautiful poem. I really like it. So we might have to have that. Anyway, you know, there's a whole treasure trove of music and poetry and fun to be had.
SPEAKER_08It's really lovely to see the light in your eyes as we actually discuss, well, the end of somebody's life in your own life.
SPEAKER_07My going away party. I love to organise a party really. So um I can get behind this one.
SPEAKER_08Do you think that you're ready to go? Do you feel like you've accomplished, you know, and seen enough of life? Or is there anything that you still long to do? Or yeah, how how are you actually feeling at this time of your life?
SPEAKER_07I haven't got a bucket list. I never have had. I am booked to go to Hawaii for the South Pacific Festival. I've been to many of those and I used to take groups to them. I was booked to go in 2020, but then COVID stopped that, so this it's started again this year. So I really hope that I can get to that because I'm booked. And my my HULA teacher has offered us accommodation, so that's just so wonderful on Oahu, and I'd like to see that. That's really um what I would like. Oh, my sister's coming up to visit me in August. And then after that, who knows? Nobody really knows.
SPEAKER_08You know, wise older women, it's raising I guess just the awareness of the level of respect that's in our community for older women. A lot of older women experience invisibility, and sometimes that can be welcomed when you don't want to be out there in the world, but other times it can be almost thrust upon people. Have you ever experienced or do you experience this sort of feeling in of invisibility?
SPEAKER_07Um not so much invisibility because I stand out a bit, but um I know what you mean about like not being considered, but like being considered an old lady, which I am. So I sometimes notice that um judgment of like you're just an old lady, but then I don't know, you know, um I'm a lot pushier than I used to be, so I don't mind kind of playing the old lady card. I think you just gotta work it so you have fun with it, yeah. So Sheena, Lilith, Pelle, all looking for a home, all found a home in me. And when we were invited to contribute a regular two-page column to the Women's Weekly, well, I grew up with the weekly and it's byline of The Voice of Australian Women. And I could never ever have imagined that that would be me. Connected to a readership network of two and a half million invisible vaginas. So I'm going to finish with a poem I wrote to Pelle, or it could be to Carly or Durga. It's to the fierce and fearless and fabulous female force, whatever name she goes by. Constantly changing, monster goddess, how shall I serve you? When birds fall from the air into smoking oceans, fish strangle on plastic, tap water burns. Hear me, I make no mistakes. I am the voluptuous rose and the grub lunching on its heart. I design viruses, annihilate galaxies before me, your tallest towers fall. Rippling repercussions of my gigantic dance, lay there your worst nightmare. I am your water, air, in voluntary prayer. See me in lightning flicker, watching from newborn to dying eyes. When you sit tired at dusk, feel me holding your hand, singing, love me in all my glorious form.
SPEAKER_08What a journey with Lilith. Fearless, poetic, and utterly original. Thank you for joining us in our CBF grant-funded series, Wow, Wise Older Women. These stories remind us of the depth, resilience, and wisdom carried by women aged 55 to 85. Women whose lived experience enriches our communities and strengthens the cultural fabric of this country. Join us next time as we continue amplifying the voices of women who refuse to be overlooked. This is a Plantation Studios production, executive producer Rasella Torres, and music from Purple Planet Music.
SPEAKER_04We are drenched in ageism in our culture. Drenched in it. I believe we are in an extraordinarily ageist culture. Racism is being talked about, sexism is being talked about. We haven't even begun to talk about ageism.
SPEAKER_06So I very definitely notice this becoming invisible. It is really something that we should try to understand as this sign of a culture that is rejecting the most important things in life.
SPEAKER_07So I sometimes notice that judgment of like you're just an old lady, but then I'm a lot pushier than I used to be. So I don't mind kind of playing the old lady card. I think you just gotta work it so you have fun with it, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I haven't felt discriminated. Maybe it's been sometimes dismissed, but I think it's been more undervaluing, and I have undervalued myself.
SPEAKER_02The more I experience it, the more I like fighting back. I go, I'll show you, you bugger. I'll show you. You think I'm useless? I'll show you that I'm not. I don't know if it's the Mexican-Italian in me, the Yank in me, I don't know what it is, but I don't let anybody put me down or ignore me.
SPEAKER_01When we let go and just acknowledge the stage of life we're at and keep shining in the knowledge that we're in this new phase of beauty, and that it doesn't matter what age you are, things are beautiful in you. And just keep cultivating every day the beauty of who you are, that never changes.