VANESSA Lee hails from Wamberal on the Central Coast in New South Wales. She has lived in Beechworth for four years after her husband introduced her to the town. “We often visited and when he got a job offer as a country doctor, we moved here and love it,” Vanessa said. What do you do workwise? Currently, I am a mother of two lovely children which takes up most of my time and attention. Before kids, I was in fashion and media. I have worked full-time at a few different national lifestyle magazines over the years. What brought you to your earlier career role? I studied fashion design at college but realised I didn’t want to be a designer, so I specialised in fashion marketing and publishing instead. I always loved magazines so working as part of a team to help create them was a bit of a golden ticket for me. What did you love about your work? To be able to come up with a concept for a photo shoot or article and then put it all together, have it printed, and then send it out into the world. What do you do in the community? I am on the committees for the Beechworth Theatre Company and am cast in their upcoming performance of Clue. I am also on the management committee for the Beechworth Montessori School. I truly believe volunteers are what helps keep this area so connected and vibrant. Is there an important community issue that you think needs addressing? I’d like to see a space for teens to hang out and socialise. I always had the local shopping mall or the cinemas to wander around when I was young, but options are limited here. What would you do to solve change or improve that situation? One of the vacant council buildings could house a youth centre and offer supervised workshops and games that are not device related for younger teens. What do you see as one of the most important current world issues? We currently rely a lot on automation and digitisation to live. If the world went off-line tomorrow, who still remembers how to do things manually to get by without Googling it? It’s important that we remember how to still do things for ourselves and to pass those skills on to our children. If the person you would most like to meet or knew, came to Indigo Shire or was already here, who would that be, what would you show them, and why? My Granny, Audrey. She adopted my Mum and raised her mostly on her own. She was a true outback lady although she always radiated city style. I remember her being dressed perfectly in pink and plucking a huntsman spider off our car windshield with her bare hands and squishing it under her heel without hesitation. I never was naughty around Granny after seeing that. I’d show her the cottage we just bought in town which we are going to name after her. She would have been well-suited to Beechworth. What book are you reading? I just finished reading ‘The Keeper of the Lost Cities’ by American author Shannon Messenger because my daughter loved it, and so I thought we could discuss it together. It’s a great series for teens about a human girl that goes to a land of elves and magic.
