• Entry type: Resource
  • Entry ID: AWH002553

Robyn Tredwell interviewed by Nikki Henningham in the Rural Women of the Year Award oral history project [sound recording]

  • Repository National Library of Australia, Oral History and Folklore Collection
  • Reference ORAL TRC 6174/4
  • Date Range 10-May-10 - 11-May-10
  • Description

    2 sound files (ca. 195 min.) Robyn Tredwell talks about her family background; growing up on a farming property in Eudlo; Old Ted the swaggy; moving to town near Nambour for work; becoming a student nurse; developing a world view through contact with refugees, migrants and seasonal visitors; living in Mooloolaba (1960s); life in the nurses’ home (1960s); moving to Cairns; working as a station cook; working with Aboriginal people on Gunnawarra; observing changes to life for Aboriginal people; going to New Zealand to work as a nurse and an Encyclopaedia salesperson; moving to Manchester, England for work (1970s); moving to Saudi Arabia to work as a neo-natal nurse; living and working in Saudi Arabia; the Saudi royal family; training nurse in Saudi Arabia; travelling to the Himalayas; preventative medicine; devising a health care program; running a clinic that used cleanliness, mega-vitamins, nutrition as the platform for improved health; illness and stress; importance of vitamin B; building a hotel in Tibet. Tredwell speaks about the Institute of Ecotechnics; studying ethnobotany in the Amazon; studying botany in London and Paris; knowledge of cultures under threat; holistic healing; link between health and the environment; the reconstruction project at Birdwood Downs; the changing technological environment; running a theatre company from the property; holding an arts workshop program involving Kalahari Bushmen (1997); creating a space for cross cultural communication and sustainability; using management, science and artistic expression to create sustainability; winning the ABC Rural Woman of the year Award (1995); ABC’s Landline program made on Birdwood Downs; her involvement in women’s organisations; her concerns for the future if money becomes the only standard for production; her son; her health; going to Canberra for the award; having well established international networks; the common links across rural communities around the world.

  • Access Access open for research, personal copies and public use.
  • Finding Aid Timed summary (8 p.) and corrected transcript (typescript, 118 leaves).

Related entries


  • Primary Creator
    • Tredwell, Robyn (1950 - 2012)
    • Henningham, Nicola (1960 - )