Purposefully breaking the glass ceiling

Early this year I sought out a multi-purpose gym set to place in my garage as part of my fitness program. I don’t know what possessed me but I thought the gym apparatus that I viewed in the sports store would be delivered to my home fully assembled. But to my surprise the courier delivered it a couple of hours later neatly and unrecognisably packaged in a condensed form. I was aghast at the task at hand as I am totally inept at anything associated with mechanical and technical processes involving nuts, bolts or chords.

The upside of this experience was that my 12-year-old daughter Jayde, who was the only one home with me at the time, volunteered to assemble the gym for me. Two hours later the gym materialised before my eyes, and such was my elation at the unforeseen level of skill demonstrated by my young daughter in putting it together, that I rang my wife Rhonda immediately to share the news.

After working her way through pages of complex diagrams and countless nuts and bolts Jayde managed, with me holding onto heavy objects like a compliant minion, something that I thought would take a skilled adult hours to assemble.

I heaped praise on Jayde and asked her some time later if she ever thought of pursuing a career as an engineer. Previously her aspirations changed with every incremental advance in school years, from wanting to be a school teacher, to a nurse, and more recently the high goal of wanting to be a professional medical practitioner. Not once though, did she allude to a possible occupation as an engineer.

“Not sure Dad - it’s not something that I’ve thought about” she said.

I wished in that instant that I could’ve named an Indigenous woman working in that field to hold up as a role model, but my mind went blank.

I know, personally, of two Indigenous men - Paul Martin from Toowoomba and Dennis Jose from Innisfail - who have carved out impressive careers as engineers, but I was unfamiliar with any Indigenous woman who had taken up that male bastion of vocations.

That was until recently, when my work colleague Ron Davis introduced me to his daughter Karen who was visiting Toowoomba from Melbourne. When I asked Karen what field of work she was involved in she informed me that she worked as an engineer - but prefers to be called a civil engineering designer. As we chatted informally I knew this was a story that I just had to record especially as I was cognisant of the dearth of Indigenous female engineers around the nation that young girls like Jayde could emulate.

When I asked Karen to name me the most important project she has worked on - nothing like cutting to the chase - she listed the Eastlink Tollway in Melbourne. In a humble tone she said:

The most significant engineering project I've worked on has been Eastlink which is a 39km tollway which runs from Mitcham in Melbourne's north to Frankston in the southeast. I worked on that project during 2005-2006 and at the time it was the largest civil infrastructure project ever in Australian history - $3.8 billion. I loved working on the Eastlink project as my work was varied. I not only worked in my usual road design area, but also helped model a wetlands area and also creek realignments. Also, I got to work with some great people who came from all over the world to work on the project. Eastlink opened in June 2008.

And, by the way, Karen has also worked on the $2.3 billion Goodna Bypass concept design west of Brisbane and the Windsor Road duplication project in Sydney’s northwest as well as dozens of other engineering projects of national significance.

Talk about a modest Murri.

Karen told me that she made an inauspicious start to her working career. Having not received a Tertiary Entrance (TE) score from her studies at Tully High in North Queensland Karen said she worked at odd jobs around town before doing a Certificate in Tertiary Preparation at Innisfail TAFE College. From Innisfail she was accepted into the University of Southern Queensland to study a two year Associate Diploma in Civil Engineering before doing extra studies to receive her Bachelor of Technology (Civic) and Graduate Diploma in Engineering (Environment).

In addition to seeking responses on her success in the highly competitive world of engineering, I was also fascinated to peer into the window of her cultural past.

Karen reflected on her childhood, growing up near Mt Mackay and Mt Tyson during the wet season. She especially loved watching the low cumulus clouds that hung over the imposing mountains. Doting memories were also aroused on the childhood topic of hearing the constant low hum of the sugar mill during the cane season and seeing the bright yellow of the cane fires at night illuminating the evening darkness.

Karen had fond memories of going swimming with her siblings on a hot summer’s day after school with her mother Val, (nee Brooks, Jidabal woman from Millaa Millaa) who always ensured picnic baskets were full of mangoes, lychees and watermelon to satisfy their hungry appetites.

Karen recalls the excitement of visiting her father Ron, (Kuku Yalanji man from Mossman) at the railway station and of him finding time in his busy schedule to give her and her siblings a ride on the baggage trolleys up and down the platform. She said her father had a range of jobs on the railway that took him all over the state. In fact, she and her siblings were born in different locations due to her father’s work transfers: Rona (Cloncurry), Ron Jn (Maryborough), Karen (Babinda) and Kirstine (Goondiwindi).

The one constant in Karen’s story is the importance of her family in her life, which she sees as “my basic unit of support and whose views I respect and value”. Although she is an engineer and her brother Ron is a lawyer (also based in Melbourne) she said they never forget their cultural roots and humble beginnings.

Karen remembers being fascinated when hearing her grandmother and great-grandmother speaking in their native language to each other. While she never learnt the language she and her siblings, like most Indigenous people around the nation, acquired a healthy vocabulary of individual words that still get used when in the company of family members today.

Great-grandmother Nanna Weare (Jidabal elder) featured prominently in Karen’s cultural reminiscence, and it was during visits to her Innot Hot Springs humble abode that she was taught how to pan for tin. Karen said her great-grandmother would retreat, from time to time, further into the bush to escape town life where she sought refuge in her little humpy.

The amazing childhood adventures for Karen resonated with me in her words from those years: “When we stayed with Nanna Weare in the bush, it would be pitch black except for the light of the camp fire.”

Karen’s passionate lineage recollection, in essence defines her traditional roots: “It determines who I am and where I've come from and it gives me an identity.”

When I asked Karen of the best advice her parents gave her as a teenager Karen said it was that “coming first wasn’t important, but giving 100 per cent of my effort was”. It wasn’t until years later that she put that saying into practice: first, when working as a tracer for an engineering company in Cairns and second, as a mature aged student at university when she chose engineering as her preferred course to “reacquaint myself with drafting work”.

Books are a passion for Karen and she informs me that she is on track to achieve her goal of reading six books in six months - mostly achieved through commuting to and from work in busy Melbourne.

Her other passions include eating out at Japanese restaurants, and she said she never gets tired of holidaying in Vancouver which she refers to as “a bustling metropolis with a wilderness at its doorstep”. She loves experimenting with flavours at home and this includes some home brewing.

Karen enlightened me on her fascination with brewing her own beer. “I'm almost onto my fourth brew which will be a European Lager, but I've also brewed Amber Ale and a Canadian Blonde. With each brew, I change something slightly, and record the results so I can discover the perfect brew”. Karen explains this with fervour only a home brewer could appreciate.

On the question of what advice would she give to young Indigenous girls wanting to get into her field of work, Karen says: “Go for it! Engineering may be a bit intimidating, but always remember your contribution is valuable.”

And as I reflect on the remarkable life of Karen and the possible career paths and purposes in life for my daughter Jayde, I think of the famous words of Robert Byrnes (b.1928) a New York columnist who said: “The purpose of life is a life of purpose.”