 Without further ado, I'm going to launch into some questions and hopefully everyone can learn a little bit about Miss Sally Williams. Sally, you're originally from England. Tell us a little bit about your early life there. I grew up in London. I was born in London. I have a younger brother. He's 18 months younger than I. Obviously, we both went to the same infant school. We both got into the same sort of trouble. We were pretty thick as thieves, did everything together, which was great. When we were in our teens, our parents lifted us out of London and moved us lock, stock and barrel to the country. We had to re-find our friends, go to different schools and all the upheaval that created. Having said that, once we settled down, we loved the countryside and very much still a country girl at heart, even now. Which is why I live up in the Danyong Ranges, which is kind of an in-between. It's not city, but it's not rural, but it's in the middle. I had a great childhood. I formed the basis of who I am today, obviously, like all of us, I think. You also said you were a tomboy. Very much so. Especially probably more so when I was at primary school. My parents would constantly get phone calls from the teachers to say you have to do something about your daughter. She's getting into scuffles. She's playing war games. She's mixing with the boys. She's playing football. She's not being a little girl. I think you should do something about that. My parents didn't change me. I just carried on playing war games and beating the hell out of the boys. Being a better football player than they were, so that was always good. All the boys wanted me on their soccer team, so I was pretty happy about that. What were your favourite games to play with them? I was and still am a soccer tragic or football back then, so I started my football career when I was just in junior school. So I would have been 8 or 9. Back in the 60s it wasn't really a game that girls played, so it was always very difficult to get into that in a formal sense. As I have just said, the boys would always pick me to play on their teams because I always scored all the goals. I guess that has to be a good thing. Do you think that at that time they understood that you were a little different there? Quite possibly deep down. I mean I knew that I was different. I knew that when I look back at myself now as a young child I am very sure that around about the age of 5 or 6 I was different from all the other girls at school. I wasn't interested in boys as such other than that I wanted to be with them, to play with them, to be one of them as opposed to look pretty for them and be asked to kiss behind the basketball sheds, which I never did. But then I never kissed a girl behind the basketball sheds either, so I was a bit of a late bloomer. How did you learn about homosexuality? That came probably when I started secondary school, I started reading a lot. It was a very difficult time for me because most of my information came from the dark corners of bookshops and libraries where you pick out a book and you look up lesbian or gay man or homosexual and it comes in to say it's a mental illness and it needs to be treated. It was such a shock for me that that would even be possible. It kept my lips for so long that I was scared that I had a mental illness and then again what would they do if they found out that that's what I was like and what would they do to me. It was very much for me play acting then that I was actually normal, which I never felt. I always felt completely different from all my friends. I didn't even socialise that much with my school friends because I didn't want the pressure of the expectations of the boys because it would be too hard because I wasn't interested. Were you experimenting at all with girls at this time? No, I wasn't. That didn't come until much much later. It's not to say I didn't fantasise about it and have serious crushes on my girlfriends. I was never strong enough, I was never brave enough to step over the line. I didn't want to be rejected and that's always been an issue for me, rejection. I just pretended and used to deal with my dreams. It was much better in my dreams because everything was perfect in my dreams. So you married a man, why did you do that? I mean that just smacks of everything of what I have just said and against what I've said. Again, I was 23. I had been sharing a house with my student nurse friends who were all coupled and eventually engaged and married. I just thought, I've just got to do, I can't just be the only one who's not doing this. I kind of got sucked into it. There was a time where I actually said to my fiance that I couldn't do it and that I wanted to call the engagement off and a little bit of emotional blackmail, I'll kill myself if you do that. When you're 23, it's like, oh my god, I don't want to be responsible for that. And then after that, the whole wedding took on, it just took over. I just felt I was on a ride, everybody else did stuff. And I just was sucked along in this journey that I didn't really want to be in. And this is a story that I have got many laughs out of. The night before my wedding, I actually spent with my bridesmaid. That just about paved it all for me. The guilt was shocking, but given that I was actually going to be walking down the aisle with my husband the following day, I had no feelings for him. I liked him, I didn't dislike him, he made me laugh and he was fun to be around. But there was nothing there. My passion was for my bridesmaid. So it made it very difficult because she was holding my dress, you know. And the last words she said to me before I walked down the aisle was, you look beautiful. Well, it was 1985 that I got married. So not that I've looked at the video for many, many years, but I don't look happy. I don't look happy at all. It was horrible. And if I had my time again, I would never do it again. How did you meet that man? I met him at the wedding of a friend, of course. And his best friend, actually, who was the husband of one of the students that I was living with, and was in my group of students. We did everything together, so it just kind of, it just happened. It seemed like the easy thing to do. So was your coming out as a lesbian with your bridesmaid? Was that the first time you identified with that? No, it wasn't actually. I didn't come out until I was in Australia. And I felt that the distance between my family and starting a new life over here made it that much easier. I was still with my husband at the time. We came out in 1988. We separated in 1990 and divorced in 1992. So I actually came out to my parents in 1990. And that was difficult in itself because just prior to our separation, my husband and I went back to England to be with my parents. Things were already rocky. He already knew about me. So when I came out to my parents, he did the woe is me kind of, woe is me. And that was probably one of the hardest things that I've ever done. I went to bed that night. And when I woke up in the morning, every single photograph that had had me in it, even from when I was a baby, disappeared. From your parents? From my parents' house. Oh my gosh. It was just like I'd been completely eradicated from their life, even though I was there in front of them, which was, as you can imagine, particularly painful. Ironically, though, my mother and I went away for a weekend, a long weekend following that. And she kind of got it. And she said, you know, I just, yeah, she got it. She knew that she said the reason why she did what she did was because she felt that my father needed some kind of action to make it, you know, to make him feel better about my decision. So that's what she'd done. It's all very convoluted. But by the time we were heading back to Australia, the photographs were back. But they didn't actually stop the pain of when I first realised that they'd all gone. So you said you were both so close to the lesbian community, but also so far away from it. Yeah. What exactly do you mean by that? That brings in the whole soccer tragic thing again. I started playing soccer when I was in my teens. Okay. And, I mean, when I look back now, it was bloody obvious that every single woman in the soccer team was lesbian. I mean, I look back at the photographs and I think, how did I not know? How did I not know? So, yes, and they tried very hard to introduce me, you know, they took me out to bars and stuff and I still didn't get it. And even when one of the younger girls, her mother, used to come and watch us play. And when I had then said, because she knew before I got married, she said, you got married. She said, you're the last person I thought would have got married. So everybody knew. I mean, I knew, but I just pretended that I was straight and because that was easy. So I was there, you know, if I'd been brave enough, I would have had, you know, it would have been so much easier for me in the UK if I'd just taken that step. But what professions attract lesbians? What professions? Well, I have a 30-year history of being a nurse and a midwife, mainly as a midwife. And certainly the caring professions, I'd say. I certainly met a lot of lesbians that worked as midwives. Creative, you know, art and tradies. I know a lot of tradies that are lesbians as well. That's kind of something that I would have liked to have done, but I'm not very good at hammering in nails or building fences. I like to think I am, but not really. So yes, I guess, yeah. You mentioned the association of radical midwives. What was that? When I was a student, I was always a little rebellious. Well, in general, it was rebellious. The association of radical midwives was very much in its infancy when I first started Midwifery and has grown into an international organisation now. Midwives and student midwives are committed to improving maternity services in the UK and internationally. They have a strong belief in that all women should have the right to a service that's tailored to their needs, not a one-size-fits-all service, which tends to be very much the case. Even now, especially over here, and I think probably in America as well, and for their birth attendance to be sympathetic to their needs and not just railroad them into decisions that they'll ultimately regret later, because obviously it's hugely emotionally packed time of their lives. And if you don't have somebody who can talk you through your experience, of course you're going to say yes to the epidural. You're going to say yes to whatever drugs that can be thrown at you. Which is, when I came over to Australia, I became a privately practising midwife. So I was with women who had home births. And that took the rebellion a little bit further and was not the favourite of hospital midwives and doctors specifically. So because I was out there on a limb helping women do something that they would rather that they didn't. What brought you to being a midwife? I can't actually remember specifically other than I always thought that I would be a midwife. So I can remember talking at school about it, oh you know what do you want to be when you grow up type of thing? I want to be a midwife. It's like nobody knew what a midwife was. What's a midwife? It's like just somebody who helps women have babies. That's a funny job. But I spent 30 odd years doing it and it was a rollercoaster in motion. So I mean I loved it. I know I have been a midwife in all sorts of places. So I've been a midwife in tertiary institutions. I've been a midwife in public, private, small hospitals in Outback Queensland where you're the only midwife on and you have to deal with whatever comes through the door. Home births, you name it. So the experience has kind of, it's been an amazing experience. I had to pull the pin that seven years ago because it was just too much politics. The fact that maternity services are not getting anywhere, we're still fighting the same fights now as we were. What are those fights? What are you fighting? Just allowing women to make their own choice about how they have their baby rather than you, you know, the doctors stating this is what you will do and that's how you're going to have your baby without actually listening to what the women really want. And my partner now is also a midwife and she has the same issues, she's always, you know, locking horns with the medical profession about, you know, what women need or what women want or what they perceive women need or what they tell women, like women often don't get a choice. So, and that's the big thing. It's just allowing women to have their own voice around having their, you know, around having their babies rather being told what you're going to do. But you mentioned emotions and that's what kinds of emotions did you have? Look, there's the highs, the lows, obviously, you know, not all women end up with a live baby dealing with the heartbreak sharing that with, sharing that with the family. All those women that have live babies that don't survive for whatever reason. So you have the highs of the baby being born and then, you know, the angst while the child, you know, the baby is unwell and then the decisions that they have to make around that and supporting the family through that. So, and supporting colleagues in the same, you know, in the same instance. So, yeah. What do you feel was your greatest accomplishment as a midwife? I think probably working as a midwife in Outback Queensland. Just women, country women are different. I don't know if anybody else is, you know, aware of that. But they just, they're strong, you know. They see their animals give birth, you know. They come in and they get on with it and they expect it to be painful. They expect it to be hard. And working with women who are so in tune with their bodies is like a breath of fresh air. So when I came back to come up to the big smoke I started working with women who were like, oh, I'm dying. You're not going to die. Believe me, you're not going to die. It's so, I mean, deep down inside of me, I just want to go toughen up, princess. Like, you're having a baby. Yeah. And then, you know, those women that say, two days after the baby's born, I really need some adult time. It's like, wow, this child is going to really struggle. If you can't handle one child after 48 hours, it's going to be tough for you. So give me the Outback women over in the city women having babies any day. Wow, that's a very strong statement. Very strong statement. Well, is there anything about that that you wish were more commonplace in the modern society? Modern hospitals? I think it's, I mean, yes, I would, it's a really, that's a really hard question to answer because so many women just hand over the, like, okay, you're the doctor, you're the midwife. Just do, you know, I'll do whatever you tell me to. And it's, I find that really hard. So it's, I don't know whether, I mean, I haven't been inside a hospital to help, you know, to be with a woman having a baby for probably eight or nine years now. So I'm sure things are slightly different, but I know the difference between the women that I looked after as a student in the late, mid to late 80s to the women that are coming through having babies now are just different. And I don't know why. I don't know how that works. I don't know what it is about, you know, modern women that make them, make them different around childbirth. It's frustrating and sad, yeah. How did you train to be a midwife? I did, I was hospital trained as I was with my general. So we, I guess it's almost like an apprenticeship, really. I mean, you start your course and you work. So, you know, you're thrown in the deep end right from the first day. And then we did, I think we had one day a week where we had lectures and, yes, I just learned on the job. And we had some amazing midwives that I work with, or that we all work with, actually. And I learned so much from them that sort of carried me through to where I was, you know, when I finished. Okay. On a slightly lighter note, you said that you have a habit of swaying straight women into relationships with you. So how do you do this? That's why I do that. Yeah, I was thinking about that on the way in, you know, I've always wondered that I've never, I've never really had a relationship with an out and out lesbian. And I'm not quite sure why that is. So whether it's, you know, the whole forbidden fruit thing, you know, the challenge. But I loved it. And so did Dave, so I mean, I can't really complain. All my long-term relationships have been ostensibly straight women who have been either come, you know, they've either lived together or, you know, lived apart but spent a lot of time together. And it was always the thrill of the, the thrill of the chase. And pushing them gently, until they just went, I can't, yeah, let's do it. And then, you know, that first time, that thrill, you know, when you can see that they're like, oh, my God, what am I doing? But then having an amazing experience, and then they just come back for more. I mean, what else can I say? But how do you know whom to approach or how to go about this? Well, there's definitely a chemistry. I mean, I just don't go willy-nilly because, you know, I'd probably get locked up. I mean, I often think about, you know, probably now I sometimes almost bordering harassment when I look back at it now, you know, I think I would never do that now. I was never, I never did anything that wasn't consensual, though. I mean, if somebody said, not interested, you know, I'm kind of like that you fancy me, but I'm not interested. It's like, OK, then, you know, thanks, thanks for letting me know. I pursued this any further. But, yeah, it's, I don't know. Oh, no, I still can't. I really still can't explain it now even to myself. So, yeah, it's... And I don't know what it is about, you know, overtly out those beings that make me think that. I don't know whether it's just because it might be a little bit... I don't know whether it's more to do with power or difference or just trying to win somebody over, you know, get them to bat for the other team. Come over the grass is greener, you know. But, yeah. How many people do you think you've been able to sway over? Oh, goodness. Nine or 10. So, yeah. Out of that lot, though, one, five of them, five women that have been in relatively long-term relationships, two long-term relationships. So, my partner prior to my partner now, we were together for 14 years, and now my current partner I've been with for... Well, we met in 2006. It was a fairly rocky start. Everybody thought, you know, we shouldn't be together, but we would shout and scream at one another and leave and come back and leave and come back. But we've actually been living together now and have been building a house for the last five years, so we've been living together for about seven. And we're in a... We don't shout the screen very often now, so that's good. Yeah. You did say you were a serial monogamous, so is that what you're depicting for me here? Yeah, well, that follows on from that, actually. If I got a little bit jaded or I was feeling that things weren't going anywhere, there'd never be much break in between partners. And often there would be overlapping, a period of overlap before, you know, one relationship would end, and I would jump into another. And I was thinking about that again on the way in. I made a little note, actually. Probably my inability to cope with being alone, but now I actually crave being alone. I would... I've come to the point now that if this relationship didn't work, which, I mean, it won't not work, I would be very happy to be on my own. I'm very happy in my own company now. I'm probably more so at the moment because my current partner's daughter and two grandchildren are living with us. So we have a nearly five-year-old, nearly three-year-old with us four nights. So we're four nights on four nights off, so, you know, lots of hideous family court shit going on. Oh, boy. So I just can't cope with that. It's just, like, too much noise. They call me Mima, which is lovely, and they're beautiful kids, absolutely beautiful kids. And on the side note to that, I have to say they're my grandchildren as well, obviously. Oliver, who is nearly five, still cannot grasp the fact that I'm a woman. He was absolutely dead certain that I was a man. All right. But no, it's like, no, Mima's the girl. No, no, Mima's... I mean, Mima's the man. Mima has a vagina. No. No. So we're just kind of cruising along on that one. Uh-huh. I'm not quite sure how we're going to broach that when he's a little bit older. We've never seen... That's his take on it. I mean, his father's never said that I'm a man. His other grandparents have never said that I'm a man. That's just who he identifies me as. So... And because I'm pretty certain that, you know, when you're in a relationship and Nan's obviously a woman, then, of course, I must be a man because how do you explain it otherwise? So we haven't quite had that conversation yet. We're not sure he's quite ready for it, but he knows, you know, ostensibly I'm a woman. But am I? Do you have children of your own? No, I don't. I've never ever wanted children right from when I was small. I have, however, a collection of other people's children. My previous partner had five. So really, I have eight stepchildren and two grandchildren, although some of my ex-partners' children have children, but I don't actually have anything to do with those little ones. So, yeah. It's a lot of children for somebody who didn't want children. Taking a step back, though, I can't help but wonder when you were with your husband, were you experimenting out with women or did you just put up with a very oppressive situation? I did experiment. My bridesmaid was an ongoing relationship during our marriage until, obviously, we moved to Australia. She was the only young woman that I experimented with. We didn't live anywhere where I knew anybody that would want to. But, yes, it was pretty oppressive. I would often, and I hope this doesn't trigger anybody, would often drive home from work, say often, probably every day. I wonder what would happen if I drove into this tree. So it was, from a mental health perspective, it was tough. I was just in a situation that I didn't want to be in. For my thoughts, then, it would be easier just not to be around. Obviously, I didn't follow through with it, thankfully. How did your husband react when you came out with this? He hoped upon hope that I was bisexual and that he would still be able to be with me. But I just said to him, that's not going to work. I can't. That's just not going to work. So it became fairly acrimonious. I don't blame him. I broke his heart and I did treat him pretty badly. But I was just being true to myself. Sometimes when you're true to yourself, people around you get hurt and it's not something that I'm proud of, but it's something that I had to do. How were you introduced to BDSM? My ex-partner, actually, was probably more of the adventurous... Well, she didn't push me into it, but she was really curious. She introduced me to a friend who then actually became a mutual friend and we used to play out scenes at their friend's house. She was in a three-way relationship, so the father of this used to go to her place. I always remember, Jo used to say, if you can't do it in your fluffy slippers and you're dressing gown, you can't do it wearing leather. It always used to make me think, that's really, wow. So often we wouldn't be dressed up. We'd be in our PJs. And it didn't actually detract from the experience. It just made it different, that's all. And then Steamworks used to put on a women's night, and I guess that's when I really saw what was out there. It was, wow, I loved it. It was just amazing. We used to try everything that was there, the slings, the cages. I so wish that that was still open. We had so much fun. And then even after Steamworks closed down, I went on Wellington, used to do monthly for women, but it was never the same. It never had the same vibe there. And I don't know, it wasn't well attended, so you didn't get the same atmosphere. It was like walking into a half-filled pub. And everybody's just kind of having their own conversation. This is a bit boring. Let's go home. But if you really didn't know anything about the lesbian community prior to really discovering that, how did you have any concept on BDSM? I'm not quite sure to be quite honest with you. I think as I said, my ex was very curious. So she really opened up the whole world of BDSM. And we kind of did a lot of reading and just a lot of experimenting with each other. That's how it started. I never played, apart from Joe, I never played with anybody outside of my relationship from a BDSM point of view. We were very much a close couple in that sense. So I wouldn't mind watching other people. I still love watching other people. But I wouldn't participate with people that I didn't know or didn't have a connection with. So when I was younger I was actually quite shy. So it's really difficult to get out there. So I guess in some respects I used to hide behind my gear and just put the cap down so that you don't just see your eyes. And you can kind of cruise the room. And people don't actually know what's going on underneath. So it was a protection as well for me. But speaking of what you call a cap, we call it cover on the other side of the ocean. Tell us about that. How are you wearing that? It was one of the things that... it was a discussion between my partner and I. So there was no special... like ceremony or challenge or... you know, anything like that that made me... I didn't earn a cap. Likewise, she didn't earn her collar. But I collared her and I wore the cap. So it was more to do with our partnership than anything to do outside of that. So because we initially were just playing with one another, it didn't matter what other people thought. I mean, I was just out there. I wore my cap. She was out there. She wore her collar. What do you most enjoy about SM activity? One of the things that I really enjoyed was depriving someone of sensory deprivation. So blindfold. One of the things... these boots particularly make a loud noise on floorboards. So if I was to blindfold my then partner and walk on the floorboards, that's basically almost all I had to do for her. And she would be like... you know, it was the boots and the noise and the anticipation of what was coming next without actually knowing what was coming next. That was really my... should I say, my game plan. That's what we did a lot of, yeah. Tell us about being Ms Melbourne Letter 1995. Tell us about that. I don't know. Carl. It was one of those weird things. I think... I don't even know how... it just happened. It was... I can't even remember how we even became competitors. I think my then partner has just said something to me. There's competition coming up. Let's enter. What is it? I don't know. I think Ms Wicked had died of death, is that right? And I know just this other competition came into being. I can't even remember how long it actually went on for. I think probably only two or three years. Three years, yeah. And I can remember we weren't... there was not to be any sexual penetration, supposedly no blood play or breaking of skin. We had to show... there has to be some kind of artistic content. And gosh, what was the other thing? To show safe sex, basically. So we... and this is where my partner came then was... she was amazing. She was the artistic director of the performance that we did. It took us ages and ages of practice to get it right. And just I remember the... I think, Carl, you were on before us, weren't you? Yeah, so I remember watching Carl thinking, oh, goodness, getting a bit hot here. This is really... I don't know how I can follow that. But going up on stage in front of all these people, there were a smattering of people out there that I knew. And then doing this performance, just the music that we used was Monigma's Mayor Culpa. And now, whenever that plays, I'm transported straight back to that stage. And it was pretty certain that there was a fairly thunderous round of applause afterwards. And I'm thinking, wow, what did we just do? And then there were other performers on after that. And just the whole night kind of went in a bit of a whirl. And then when they called out the winners, obviously, Carl was the winner of Mr Melbourne Leather. And then they called out my name. And I'm thinking, no, this can't be right. This can't be right. And I got so wrapped up in the celebrations and the photographs and the putting on of the sash and that I completely forgot about my partner. Oh, no. It was like, how bad is that? And I just, even now, this pang of guilt that she wasn't up on stage with me. Like, what kind of top does that to their submissive light? It was not good. It didn't come up in our relationship for some time, but as stuff started to get antsy and not good, I would get that thrown back at me. And, yeah, I mean, I still feel a lot of guilt around that. But having said that, the whole was just the most amazing night. But it was just a night. Like, I don't think anything, it's not like the competitions today where people, you know, there's not charities and amazing money. It was just a night. I don't think, apart from going back the next year to judge the competitors for the next Mr. and Mrs. Melbourne Leather, I don't think there was nothing. I had the sash, I was Mrs. Melbourne Leather, 1995. And clearly that's still, you know, people still remember that, but sometimes I think, really. Sometimes I feel a bit of a fraud. What's the biggest misconception about you? That I'm scary and unapproachable. There you have it. That's right. And often, yeah, people think that. And I think I portray that sometimes. If I don't want to talk to somebody, then I'll put up the barriers. But if I think, hey, you know, I think I'd really like to get to know you, then my closest friends will laugh at that. They just said, no, you're just a marshmallow. Scratch the surface and you're all soft and gooey underneath. So I think that sums me up. Sally Williams, thank you for participating and being part of the fireside staff. Thank you.