5 minutes with Sally Warriner
Published 08 March 2024
International Women’s Day is a global day of celebrating the achievements of women. We thought there was no better way to mark this day than to highlight the amazing work of a special Queensland author.
Sally Warriner is the author of Not Just the Wife of the General Manager (2022), a rollicking memoir of her life on outback cattle stations. This book is also a homage to the many unsung women like her.
Sally describes herself as an “Author, country woman, mother, nurse, traveller, inquisitor and lover of life.” Hear from this fabulous new author in our insightful exclusive interview.
What is Not Just the Wife of The General Manager about?
Not Just the Wife of the General Manager is a story about my life in the remote outback; a twenty-five year marriage; the raising of seven children; my experiences as the practising nurse on several properties, including in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples communities; my husband’s and my son’s eight light aircraft accidents (luckily with no fatalities); the many hair-raising adventures in the stock-camps; my long association with Kerry Packer (who bought the property from us in 1983) and his family; the sadness of leaving my husband and the land; and my next phase in life, once my sons were educated, to do volunteer work for years in Africa; and on to my sea-change to life in Byron Bay which I imagine will be my final move.
What inspired you to write your first book?
I have always been a keeper of memorabilia, and one day, after having left the bush for twenty years, I uncovered a box full of memories. I was on lock-down during the Covid pandemic when I was working as a nurse in a testing facility.
I thought then that I had the time, I had the memorabilia in the box, and I had a story to tell. So I started writing, and though it took me four years, I finally finished the memoir.
What do you hope readers gain from Not Just the Wife of The General Manager?
I hope readers of my book, particularly women who perhaps have not been as much appreciated as they deserved, get a kick start out of my story, and one woman’s pitch for recognition of her efforts, and the efforts of so many like her.
The ‘outback’ has long been a part of Australia’s imagination, inspiring countless films, television series, and books. Why did you think it was important to share your perspectives on life on a cattle station?
I think there are too few people who know what life in the outback is really like, and I hoped that my memoir would bring some of the adventures we all had to life.
This book uncovers the unsung story of a resilient, courageous woman in Australia’s far North. How does your voice shed a different light on this part of Australia?
I’m not sure my story sheds any more light on life in the outback than so many other stories bush women have written over the years. My perspective is a bit different perhaps than most, because I was working for a big corporate, which differed in many ways from smaller family operations, though those women worked every bit as hard as I did.
How has your life changed since the publication of Not Just the Wife of The General Manager?
My life got very busy after publication, as I had to take my book on the road and publicise it. I found out very quickly that if authors don’t get out and about doing promotional work, they don’t sell many books, as the publisher’s promotional work is very short lived. It has been a huge learning curve for me, but I would say that I have enjoyed all the promotional work I have done. I’ve also met some really wonderful people while on the road.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
I have begun writing another book! This time the novel will be about my volunteer years working for MSF in Africa, and various other medical volunteer work I have done since leaving the bush. Stay tuned for more…
You can hear more from the author at our free upcoming event In Conversation with Sally Warriner on Friday 3 May at Redcliffe Library. Book now to reserve your spot: mbrc.link/sallywarriner-event.