Community
21 March, 2024
Kavenagh history to be unveiled in new book
TERANG’S Anne Kavenagh will launch her biography this weekend on the 59th anniversary of her move to Australia.
Her biography, ‘The Green Swank,’ will launch this Sunday (March 24) at the Commercial Hotel from 4-6pm.
She spent around four years working on the biography with Camperdown-based friend Robin Lucas, carefully tracing her steps from the moment she sat in Pembury Hospital in Kent, England, contemplating a move to Australia.
She assured her family she would only move away to experience a different way of life for two years, and after receiving notice she would be accepted in to Australia with just two weeks to decide, little could she imagine how life would unfold.
In 1965 she boarded a plane departing Heathrow Airport for the 23-hour flight to Melbourne, with nothing more than 75 pounds and her sights set firmly on the south west.
‘The Green Swank’ pulls no punches in bringing to light the experiences of the now 80-year-old import.
“There’s a lot of very funny little stories in it,” Mrs Kavenagh said.
“Since the first day I came here, I was lucky to be here only two days when my uncle took me to Koroit hospital and I was asked if I would be prepared to start the next day.
“The young nurses used to have a lot of fun.”
During her time in Australia the Irish-born product would experience all of the country, and the south west itself, had to offer.
Mrs Kavenagh has extensive experience in health care, having worked just about everywhere from Terang Hospital through to Warrnambool.
Her time in aged care exposed her to the best and the worst of humanity, from reassuring patients whose family left them behind to rubbing shoulders with May Noonan herself.
Mrs Kavenagh met her husband, Kerin, and began a long history in the region’s agricultural boom.
Among the stories told in the book was how Mrs Kavenagh was inspired to write her biography, thanks to an encounter with famed Irish-American author Frank McCourt in Melbourne.
“I happened to be down in Melbourne on my own, and Frank McCourt was sitting there signing books,” she said.
“He was great – I knew he came from Limerick (Ireland) and we struck up a conversation.
“I said I had been thinking about writing my stories, and he said “go for it, anyone can write a book.
“He was the one who encouraged me to have a go at writing.”
‘The Green Swank’ will hit the shelves next week at Collins Bookstores in Warrnambool and at the Terang Newsagency.