This week in My Extraordinary Life we catch up with Wendy Travers, a 73-year-old grandmother of five who’s had an amazing life. She’s climbed the highest mountain in America, counselled prisoners in a Seattle gaol and only last year, completed the Scootabor Challenge, driving a 50cc motor scooter 2,400 kilometres across the Nullabor.
These days, Wendy lives in a unit with her husband, Warren, in Broadwater Court, overlooking the water at Kincumber on the NSW Central Coast. She says she saw the ad for the Scootabor Challenge in the Village Weekly News and thought immediately, “I want to do that.”
So she decided to join a group of 22 people, aged 65 years and over last year and ride a 50cc motor scooter across the Nullarbor, raising money for beyondblue.
The group of “oldies” (as Wendy calls them) rode via the Eyre Highway from Port Augusta to Norseman, and then onto Perth, raising a total of $80,000. They donated all of this to beyondblue – an organisation set up to help people with depression.
Important to remove stigma
She laughs and says Warren “probably thought she was nuts,” but she knew it was something she had to do. “I did it because I think beyondblue is an important organisation. I think we have to try and remove the stigma of depression and get people to speak out about it,” she adds.
Wendy was the only driver on the Challenge from NSW and because it is the only state which requires people driving a 50cc motor scooter to have their license, she had to do that before she could start the Challenge.
“Yes, I had to get my motorcycle license at 72 but that’s just what I had to do,” she laughs.
No luxury stops
It took two weeks for the group to get to Perth and they only had two caravans with them and about five support people, so it wasn’t a luxury trip by any means.
“We covered 380 kilometres some days. When we stopped, we’d put our signs up and the people of Australia were fantastic – twice we were handed $400 while we were having breakfast. You couldn’t really miss us – we’d be set up somewhere in a little town at an athletic centre or in a football club. We slept on stretchers from the Defence Force and for someone of our age, it was a fairly tough trip,” says Wendy.
But she adds: “It was very satisfying. I was very impressed with beyondblue’s educational approach and the generosity of the people we met was just fantastic.”
Seattle prison inmate gets too close
Wendy’s life is extraordinary because over the years, she’s filled it with a range of unusual adventures. She met her husband while she was on a working holiday in New Zealand. They married and had two boys, Paul and Anthony. Later, Warren landed a job with Weyerhaeuser – at the time the largest timber company in the world. Because it was an American company, they lived overseas in many different cities, including Hong Kong, Brussels and Seattle.
While in Seattle, Wendy worked as a facilitator in conflict resolution for five different gaols there. She says it was an “amazing experience” but after six years, she had to stop doing it because a particular inmate, who she thought she could handle, got out on parole and she knew he was keen on marrying her.
Soon after he got out on parole, she was watching the news and saw his photo come up and he had murdered a woman. “I knew I was in danger so I moved out of town the next day. Warren had already just flown out to Korea so I just got in the car and drove away as fast as I could,” she adds.
Formative years in migrant camp
Wendy was born in Guyra near Armidale but at the age of six she moved with her family to a migrant camp in Greta. “There were 14,000 migrants and two schools but only four Australian children – including my brother, Richard and me.”
“So I was mixing with Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and White Russian people all the time during my formative years. I would say a lot of them had Jewish backgrounds and they had all managed to escape a difficult situation, so they taught me a lot.
“They were all very well educated but of course they had no qualifications to work in their field here in Australia. But they taught me “only cry over what you can’t replace in life” and I’m sure it set me up for the rest of my life,” she adds.
Open to new experiences
The more you talk with Wendy, the more you realise she has kept herself open to new experiences her whole life. While living in various countries with her family, they have scuba dived around the world, climbed Mount Raineier in Washington – the highest peak in the US – gone dog sledding in Alaska and paddled around the Vancouver islands.
Now that she’s living with Warren in a retirement village, she laughs and says she’s surprised by how much she enjoys it: “I never thought I would be here in a retirement unit. It is lovely. I’m an early morning person so I go biking first thing in the morning. We’re on a big bay on Brisbane Waters and there’s a three kilometre pathway we can ride on – it’s magnificent.”
While Warren and her family and friends are supportive of her adventurous lifestyle, including the Scootabor Challenge, she admits a few friends “maybe think I’m a bit demented.”
“They think you have to be careful at this age. I think we have to live at this age. We’re never too old to seize the moment,” she says.
