Project: Small Town Queer podcast interviews Interviewee/s: Leonie Dickinson Interviewer: Emma Shield, Project Co-curator. Location recorded: Murwillumbah, New South Wales, Australia. Date: 01/02/2021 Transcription by: Emma Shield, Project Co-Curator. Small Town Queer Podcast Series Episode Seven: Creating A Community (Music) (Introduction) Emma: You are listening to the Small Town Queer podcast produced by Tweed Regional Museum in Northern New South Wales, Australia. Follow us as we uncover and explore Tweed's rich queer history from the early 1900s to the present. The Museum has collaborated with LGBTQIA+ community members to collect, share and preserve the histories of Tweed's many and varied queer voices. (Music) (Aboriginal Acknowledgement) Emma: We wish to recognize the generations of local Aboriginal people of the Bundjalung Nation who are the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which we are recording this podcast today. (Music) (Podcast Hosts) My name is Emma Shield, and my name is Erika Taylor, and we are the curators of the Small Town Queer digital project and exhibition. (Interviewer) Emma: Hello! On today's podcast, we're talking with Leonie Dickinson. Leonie works in vocational education and training, dividing her time between the Tweed and the Northern Territory, where she specializes in working with Aboriginal people from remote communities. Before moving to the Tweed Coast from Melbourne in 2004, Leonie studied at the Australian Film Television and Radio School in the late 1980s. Leonie became a Film Director and Digital Content Producer and was the first female in the audio department at Channel 7 1 in Melbourne. In 2017 Leonie created an inclusive online community for Lesbian and [self-identified] Dyke campers, which currently boasts almost 2500 members. (Emma): Welcome, Leonie. Thank you for joining us. We're starting our podcast series by asking all of our participants: how do you identify as a small-town queer? (Leonie): Um, well, on two levels there; one is that I identify as a Lesbian, but I also strongly identify as a small-town survivor. Growing up in a small town in rural Victoria, I always knew that I was different, but I didn't have any models role models to tell me what that difference was. I thought I was just a tomboy, and then years later, I discovered soft butch. (Emma): And did you discover that by leaving a small town and going to move somewhere else? (Leonie): Um, look, I can't remember what I came across, but at 12 years old, I actually came out at school. And um, the girls who I'd, the kids I'd gone to school with all reacted with a distance, and I thought, oh I've done the wrong thing. So I immediately jumped back into the closet, and then, you know, Uni was basically a safe place, you know, ten years later. Um, you know, we were discussing things, and where it was philosophically open and, you know, we were the hippie, you know last of the era of the 70s. The Lesbian Movement scared the hell out of me at first because it was, um, in the late 70s, it was still strongly separatist, and I have ten brothers, and so it was. I just thought, oh, you know I'm not about to cut out all of my siblings here. Um, so look, I think I was a bit late for Aquarius Festival as well. So I'm sure it had some impact, you know, in a trickle-down effect, uh, but I, I was post that really. And you know, I was just post Women's Lib[eration] stuff, but it was, I think it was probably more Feminism that drew me to Lesbianism, um and that, there were basically, you know, some Lesbians around me at Uni. (Emma): Did you ever feel pressured to be part of the Separatist Movement? (Leinie): Um... (Emma): Which was a strong movement within Feminism as well, too, so… (Leonie): I didn't feel pressured to become part of the Separatist Movement, although my first girlfriend and I, we identified strongly as not being Separatists, and we took quite a few years to find each other. I was a late, late starter with relationships. I wasn't in a relationship until I was 24, even though I'd identified as a Lesbian for three or four years. 2 (Emma): What attracted you to the point where you decided to actually move here [Tweed Shire]? (Leonie): I think the natural beauty of the Northern Rivers has always been the magnet, you know. You've got beaches and hinterland, and you couple that with it was the largest Gay and Lesbian um Community outside of Sydney, or you know Melbourne outside of any city. And then for me, it simply became that the internet, even though it was ADSL, you know, um, became usable from a distance. So I was able to, um, sit in an in a home office writing scripts and then, you know, putting in funding applications from a little regional hub really and Screenworks had just started in Byron Bay, and it was a brilliant resource, and there were a few of us that made the move out of Sydney or Melbourne. (Emma): What kind of work were you doing in the Northern Rivers at that point? (Leonie): In the early days of moving up, um, I was still aspirational to direct films. I, you know, I've made a living as a Sound Recordist for 15 years, and um, had sold some films to ABC and SBS as a Director. Um, but it was, I wanted writing time, so I kind of got stuck into that and then very fortunate because every man and their dog wants to be a Filmmaker or Director, um fortunately for me I got into teaching and um, I started teaching filmmaking, and I commuted from Byron bay to Grafton for seven years [laugh]. (Emma): It is a long way for our listeners that aren't aware of that particular trek! [Laugh]. (Leonie): Yeah, yeah. So, it was a two-hour drive for work, and I used to stay down there two or three nights a week and taught at Grafton TAFE very happily for a number of years part-time, also still writing the scripts and putting in my funding applications. (Emma): What were the themes you were wanting to write about or explore in your writing and documentary filmmaking? (Leonie): Comedy documentaries is my theme. Um, so, I'm always, you know, looking for the ordinary, and you know trying to find a twist on it. In the last few years, I've got into management in education, so, um, that kind of, uh and I also as a Sound Recorder so I specialized in working in Aboriginal communities and I did that. I've worked with Aboriginal communities, um mostly in central Australia and probably over a 30-year period. And so, culture and ceremony and things like that have been really important in my work. So now I, I've semi-retired, camping, rest and relaxation have taken on a bigger passion. I'm still doing some teaching 3 because I love the face-to-face relationship but um, watch this space for Van Dykes… I'm open; I've just started to think about will I go down the road of, you know, some formal documentary idea. (Emma): I think, um I think you're on to something there because maybe for people that aren't familiar with Van Dykes and I'll ask you to introduce the listeners to the group, it's a very interesting story, and we explore a little bit of it in an article that we've written about women's only [spaces] and it as Leonie says it's not a separatist group but you, there is a little bit of criteria for joining and some expectations about, you know, what the content is that's discussed. It's a Facebook group, but people meet up all the time as an individual, um travelling companions, but also you organize a few events, and we'll talk a little bit about that. So for the listeners, can you tell us about Van Dyke's? How, what was the impetus for it? (Leonie): The impetus for Van Dykes grew out of Melbourne Cup day about four years ago. Having grown up in Victoria and lived in Melbourne, it was a public holiday, and I found myself working. I thought stuff this [laugh]. I used to hang with a group of artists by the Maribyrnong River, and we used to watch all the rich people come back in their wealthy boats getting booked by the Water Police on Melbourne Cup day, and that was our entertainment. I just thought I need to hang with a bunch of people on Melbourne Cup day, and I thought, who do I most want to hang with? It was obvious, a bunch of Lesbians - is what I've got most in common with. And so, it was a very simple thing. I'd just driven back from Alice Springs yet again back to the East Coast, and along the way, I'd met a couple of older Lesbians we were in another camping group that had kind of gone pear- shaped. It was a women-only camping group on Facebook, and I just thought, I think there's a need here, and more so, I'm looking for a gang. So I thought I'll just start my own group.