EO: Hi, my name is Elly. I’ll be 29 this year, and I’m a proud [inaudible word] woman of the Guugu Yimithirr speaking people from Hopevale, Cooktown, far north Queensland. Right now I’m an employment coordinator for the 100 plus Jobs Initiative at MG Corporation, which means I help people get job ready and into jobs, which includes helping people get their I.D. documents, set up their bank accounts and superannuation, create and update resumes, assist with job searches and applications and inform people about support services and refer them on to them.

This job has made me realize how my life’s journey has led me to this – helping people. Back in 2003, when I was just ten years old, I went to school crying. My teacher asked me what had happened and took me up to the office where I met my first child safety officer. And I explained what was going on and why I was continually showing up crying.

I felt surprised and comforted because she was my aunt. She explained her job and that she helps children and families when they go through difficult things like I was. This was where I first learned that there are jobs and how people. In 2004, my family moved to Cairns to get a fresh start and between 2004 and 2010, I ended up attending five different schools: 2004 at Cairns Private School. 2005 at Cairns State School.

They moved to a rural town, small state school in between 2006 and ‘09. Boarding school in another rural town, and then mid 2009, I moved back closer to home and attended a state high school to finish my schooling. Reverse back in 2007, I was 14 at a boarding school and I wanted to do a school based traineeship, as after school jobs were out of the question, an opportunity came up for myself and some peers to join a program which was through the former [inaudible words] program where they offered a training program through school called Afterschool Sports Pass.

This training was only one day a week, but it meant I could earn some money while learning. In this program, I learned how to create and implement sports activities where kids of all abilities and disabilities could be included, and how to change the mainstream sports and games to become inclusive. I was learning how to be inclusive in a professional way while helping children my age and younger feel included and teaching them how to do so and help as well.

At only 14 to 16 years old, I was feeling empowered. Back at school, I would share my newfound knowledge to my little group and teach them and help them understand about helping and inclusiveness. In my little group, there was about ten of us, ten young teens who had come from all parts of northern Australia to school. There, where I was, four brothers came from the N.T. and six of us girls from the Cape York, who, it turns out, were all my distant cousins through my great-great grandfather.

I realized when they referred to me as mum or Big Sis that I was the older one of the group and they were all looking up to me for guidance and help in their everyday team issues, including schoolwork and other friends circles, how to speak to teachers and sporting groups. And I was learning skills and knowledge in this program and transferring this knowledge into help for my friends.

Mid-Year 11 in 2009 and at 16 years age, I left boarding school to be closer to home and hope my mother more with looking after my two younger brothers. I enrolled in a state high school back in my rural town. I was only back there short while and found myself in a group of ten peers who again happened to be my younger cousins, this time from my great grandmother’s side, six from the local town and four were from [inaudible word].

We were sitting at a little lunch table, each saying how boring school was and wondering if there were any jobs or school based apprenticeships so we could earn our own money, which would [inaudible word] our parents boxes, go to school and earn your own money. A teacher then came over to us and introduced herself to us and explained what a job was.

‘Hi guys. I’m [inaudible word] and I’m the new employment officer here and I help school kids get job ready and into jobs in school, including stuff like school-based traineeships. And if you’re in year 12 school-based apprenticeships. Our eyes lit up because how random. We were just talking about that. So, four of us girls ended up in a school based traineeship through a program called Aboriginal Employment Strategy.

We got to undergo a school-based traineeship one day a week working at the big four banks ANZ, Commonwealth, NAB and Westpac. Mine was NAB. I then helped the others of my group to find pathways to employment and sporting opportunities so they too could have the best of both worlds. Like us four girls. Halfway through my traineeship in year 12, I fell pregnant with my first son.

My parents and my partner freaked out. My parents freaked out because they thought I would drop out of school and my traineeship, like all the other teen pregnant mums and my partner, because he thought he would be the cause of this. I contacted my school employment officer and explained the situation. She agreed to help me set up meetings with my [inaudible word] trainer and the bank manager.

In these meetings with them, I had to explain to them that one, I was pregnant; two, I was keeping the baby; three that I wanted to keep going and finish my schooling and traineeship; and four, I would create a schedule, a timetable for the remainder of the year to show them what I needed to do, where I needed to be, when I needed to be at school and work.

And the extra time I had to make up for any lost attendance for pregnancy related appointments. They were all happy, relieved and agreed to keep me on at both – my school and my traineeship. And by the end of year 12, in November 2010, I’d completed a cert ii in business communications with 20 extra hours more than I required to pass.

I also won an award through the program for Trainee of the Year. I completed, passed all my year 12 exams and assessments and graduated successfully at seven months pregnant. All with only missing a total of three days school and gaining my provisional driver’s license and moving back home to Cooktown, near [inaudible word]. This showed my little group and other people my age that just because you face a challenging difficulty doesn’t mean we can give in to the stereotype cycle.

We can find solutions and power through and complete our goals. In January 2011, I gave birth to my first son. That year I had a gap year and just looked after my son and my sister in law had a daughter around the same age. We helped each other through learning how to look after our babies, how to feed them, baby blues, getting our exercise in and exploring what jobs we could do when we were ready.

By March 2012, I managed to get myself, myself a job at the local ANZ, where I was again helping people understand their banking and referring them on to branch financial advisor, as well as being a local Indigenous woman, familiar face, and that they could talk to confidently and help with the bank language to English interpretations.

By October 2012 I had a miscarriage and resigned from my ANZ job. As I was starting to spiral into depression over this. We moved out of our townhouse and lived in a caravan at my in-laws property out of town. After this, my partner and I had discussions about what we would do next. He suggested we go to live and work on a cattle station for a company he had worked for before.

By March 2013, we had packed up our belongings and headed 2500 kilometers west to Flora Valley Station in WA. [Inaudible words] I discovered that these managers had already been in the station employment for over 15 years, and I figured I could learn a lot from them, especially in a very isolated environment with no distractions.

The manager’s wife picked up that I was good at talking to people and explaining things and had good computer skills. So she got me to do all the inductions for the new employees coming to the station. Then she taught me how to do data input, which I picked up pretty quickly, and this helped her so she could do other jobs that needed doing that with pressing before.

I also learned how to cut up a beef killer, how to cook for 15 to 20 people, recipes, how to utilize food and improvise when we didn’t have certain things, how to help in the cattle yards, how to help people with the hospital trips, including first aid, etc. You see where I’m going with all the helping. Then in 2014, I fell pregnant with my second son, and hospital visits to town were about 120 kilometers one way on a dirt road to Halls Creek.

I did those in fortnightly, then weekly trips, all the while still doing the same stuff. How cool. Having people know exactly how I was feeling, had been in the same condition I was before and being understanding and supportive of me. This meant also utilizing my frequent town trips so they could get their food, equipment, stores and more regular scheduled doctor visits for any cowboys and cowgirls who needed to go in.

By late January, early February 2015, we headed back home to Queensland to have our second son, who was due on the 20th of February. Unbeknownst to us, he was dying inside of me and once we checked into the Cairns Base Hospital for a routine checkup, the doctors picked up that his heart rate was going down and had to perform an emergency C-section on the 9th of February. He was born at 38 weeks and was only the size of a thirty week old. This broke me. I slowly spiraled into depression again as he spent four weeks in the intensive neonatal unit.

In those four weeks of what seemed like hell, I had two cousins who are also waiting to have their babies. One had bad anxiety and high blood pressure, so I comforted and supported her through a hell, through her ordeal until after his son was born in the second week I was there and the other, who was only 17, had her son in the third week I was there and also I gave advice and comfort and also helped them understand some things that can or was happening to them, especially the stuff the doctors had managed to skip, like breastfeeding, mastitis, baby blues, and where to get more health advice and resources for these things.

By June 2015, me and my little boys travel back to the station to join their dad, and by January 2016, we moved to the outstation Nicholson Station to sort it out, ready for the needed cattle contractors throughout that year. Wiithout realizing, I began to spiral deeper into depression, where anxiety joined me. So much work and helping people and I hardly slept right.

Daily, I would cook breakfast for the contractors, sort my five and one year old out with food and activities, clean the main kitchen, prepare lunch stuff for the following day, bake some cakes and cookies, prepare dinner, make sprinklers, sort the gardens, cook dinner, do laundry, feed the animals, tidy my house, greet and socialize with all the workers, all while somewhere in between teaching my son through his school [inaudible words].

I became afraid that I wasn’t doing enough and slowly stopped eating and sleeping properly. On a cold night in August, I called my mother, who was about 2500 kilometers away back in Queensland, and asked her if she could come and rearrange my house. Sounds silly, but I absolutely hated her moving my furniture around. And she knew this. She replied, I’ll be there in a week. Send me the directions.

One week later, when she arrived, we sat outside at the table. Like all our serious discussions growing up, and I broke down telling her that I felt like killing myself. But I didn’t want to. She hugged me tightly and said, Mum’s here now my turn to help you. She got my daily to do list to try do what I did for a week and made me rest.

She couldn’t even complete my daily tasks and told me it was time to go home and get proper help. By December 2016, which was the end of that year, I had moved my little family of four back home to Queensland, endured three suicide attempts and finally got professional help and medication.

Later on it was a late afternoon, in January 2017, the following year I was sitting on the veranda at my Aunty [inaudible word] house when she asked me to tell her about what I’d been doing on the station and explained the lead up to where I was then. I was talking to her for about 20 minutes when she stopped me and said, Ellen, I don’t want to hear about what your partner did or what everyone else was doing. Tell me what Ellen did.

So I spoke about what my part in everything was and what I did. To which she replied at the end. Sounds like you are always helping everyone else. What about you? Who helps you? And I casually said, No one. I do it all by myself. And she told me the most valuable thing I have always carried since then.

If you want to help and be there for others, you need to help and be there for yourself first. I have carried those words with me and everything I have done throughout the years in jobs, in life, in my relationship, in motherhood, in friendships and have said the same to other people in need as well. So in all my jobs or roles throughout the years, I have always been helping people.

But somewhere along the way I had forgotten to help myself first. So to sum it all up, between 14 and 16 years of age, I was the trainee sports activity coordinator helping kids; 2009 to ‘12, 16 and 19, I was a bank teller and a mother;  22 to 23, I was a station hand/manager support helping; 24 to 26 I was admin, an admin officer and a general laborer.

In 2020, at 27 years old, I was a salesperson. And then from mid 2020 to now, I’ve been an employment coordinator. In all that time I have been a role model, a friend, a mother and a teacher, and I have always been helping and healing in both myself and other people. So if you want to help and be there for others, remember to heal and help yourself first.

Thank you.