Women don't do that. Write back when you're a bit older. And that was the policy for a long, long time. I was the one woman in 19 in the end, out of 500 people who were interviewed. When we were doing the foreign service training course for three months and we were taken all around Australia, and we were being introduced to aspects of Australian society, so that we could better represent our country, when we went overseas, there were things that I as a woman was not allowed to do.
Mining is very important in Australia.
It's a very important base of our economy. Yet, when we visited the mines, I was asked to stay on top. I was not allowed to go down, because that would, in some way, be in breach of the conventions of the miners. That was a bit startling to me. Mind you, I'm claustrophobic, so I probably privately didn't mind, but I felt challenged by the refusal.