One of the great stepping stones of my life

“They pointed up this hill and said, ‘Maria, you’re going to climb that’ and I thought, ‘never in a million years’.”

But climb it she did and, five years on Maria Anderson still regards her introduction to the Kimberley and ARLP Course 12 as one of the defining moments of her life. “The Kimberley was an experience and a half,” she says.

“It’s been one of the great stepping stones of my life,” says this Wongi woman from the WA goldfields region. Maria now works with the Red Cross in Port Augusta, South Australia.

“I took on challenges I never would have believed possible before,” she says. “The program readied me for many things that I’ve done since.”

Maria acknowledges that she’s not a great air traveller, hence her reluctance several years after her course had finished to travel with an ARLP group to India as part of her graduation requirement.

“After two days, I told Karim Haddad (the ARLP Program Manager) that I wanted to go home … the crowds, the noise, the cars … it was too much and all I wanted to do was get some space around me, smell the red dirt and sit in front of a fire.

“But Karim persuaded me that there was much to be learnt from the visit, so I looked and listened and got so much from the experience – not the least being that I now know how lucky we are in Australia.”

She credits the ARLP with equipping her for a future that has seen her embrace a dizzying round of undertakings with Indigenous community groups throughout South Australia.

She travelled throughout the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands in the state’s north doing health promotion, and worked on the Sam Our Way program with young Indigenous youth, yarning with them about the impact of drugs and alcohol on social and emotional wellbeing.

With Red Cross, she’s again faced her fear of flying to go to Vancouver to study Respect Ed, a Canadian program designed to counter family violence. Adopting the program in Port Augusta has resulted in contact with a wide range of authorities and community groups – from police, courts, health and other government agencies through to Indigenous organisations.

She’s also been appointed to the National Rural Women’s Coalition. Somewhere in the middle of all this, she’s attained a Certificate Four as a qualified trainer and has made regular appearances on local media – both the ABC and the local Indigenous broadcaster, Umeewarra Media.

“Media training as part of the ARLP was a terrific experience,” she says, “and I’m now a confident public speaker.”

That’s a big step from the young woman whose elders used to say of her, “Who’s that girl never says anything?”

Maria’s aim is to empower the next generation of young people and to encourage and support their transition to leadership.