I have to admit, I had been guilty of exactly the sort of stereotyping that this was intended to fight. I was under the impression the Country Women’s Association was an organisation where women gathered to eat scones and crochet intricate scenes involving swans, it turns out that was actually hugely sexist of me and I am a big piece of shit.
The CWA branch in the NSW town of Kyogle (which you might be familiar with if you’ve ever driven the inland route from Brisbane to Sydney) is working to educate people about what they actually get up to, namely by entering into the ‘Mad Max‘ of the motorsport world: demolition derby.
President of the chapter, Odette Nettleton, wants peoples people to know there’s more to the CWA than baking:
“I don’t think there’s many opportunities to get in and do this stuff generally for women and why not create some more.“I’m sure we’ll be baking as well, but there’s no reason why we can’t bake and smash cars.”
They took what is, by the look of it, a circa 1999 VT Commodore (a beautiful vehicle), decorated it with doilies and crocheted flowers and entered it into the deadliest of all games: vehicular combat.
A northern branch of the @cwaofnsw is smashing stereotypes, as well as a few cars, in their local #DemolitionDerby. https://t.co/ya40NdEc4O pic.twitter.com/pmuEHnpVOG
— ABC News (@abcnews) October 11, 2016
They didn’t win this time but it sounds like they driver had a blast:
“I got in the mess of it and the next minute my car wasn’t going, I just wanted to get it into a gear, forwards, backwards, anything, I just wanted to keep going.”“I’d love to do it for longer because it was so much fun.”
Source: ABC.
Photo: ABC / Samantha Turnbull.
