THE AUTHOR

Doreen Wendt-Weir

I was born to a dairy farmer on the Logan River. I walked barefoot five kilometres to school at Logan Village, dodging meat-ants and savage magpies on the way. Later, I attended the Brisbane Girls Grammar School, where I aspired to journalism. I completed Year 10 in 1943, and won an Extension Scholarship, but World War II intervened and I left school to become part of the war effort, ultimately working for the US Army as a librarian (when I was sixteen).

After the war, and having no accreditation, I went on to become a Nursing Sister, (a good background when you are foraging for someone’s personal details!). A year in England followed, where I obtained my DCM (District Certified Midwife) by riding on a bicycle around Boston in Lincolnshire in the snow, delivering babies and giving anaesthetics.

Back in Australia, marriage and four children followed. At 65, finding myself alone, I upped anchor and established a Studio/Gallery on Tamborine Mountain, for by then I was an artist, creating oil paintings, enamels and my popular ‘golden bowls’.

I wrote a lovely little waltz while running my gallery. It is called “Waltz With Me Darling Tonight”. We sometimes dance to it at one of the country dances that I attend on a Saturday evening. It gives me such a buzz to be waltzing to my very own music! I have the sheet music for it.

One day, at 71, while making beads in my studio (rolling the clay, putting a hole in it, painting and glazing it, firing it), I was struck by the thought: Could I have done more? Forthwith, I contacted Griffith University. I was ultimately selected to enrol in a Bachelor of Arts course, majoring in Creative Writing and Indigenous Studies.

Good results were obtained, and a reputation gained. If a student complained about the workload being too hard, the lecturer might say, ‘I think you had better talk to Doreen!’
Whereupon I would say, ‘Well, if it’s not difficult, I don’t want to do it! If every Tom, Dick and Harry can come to University and easily get their BA, it’s not for me!’ I was made a member of the Worldwide Society of Academic Honour as a result of my attaining a Grade Point Average of 6 out of a possible 7.

During this period, I wrote Barefoot in Logan Village, an oral and anecdotal history of the Logan Village District. Along with others, it is my childhood story, my parent’s and my grandparent’s story; even the account of my great-grandparents who emigrated from Germany after losing three children in a month to diphtheria. Arriving on the Logan in 1884, they lost all in the disastrous flood of 1887, but went on to prosper in their new country.

After gaining my BA, I completed a BA (Hons) Degree, my dissertation being “The German Immigration to the Logan District, Particularly from the Point of View of the Women”. It largely was written in my grandmother’s voice, from recollections of the stories I had listened to, at my grandmother’s knee. Of course, the hard part was applying it to theory.

It was suggested (with some irony) during this time, that not much research had been done on the sex lives of older people, and that I was the one to do it!
‘Why me?’
‘Aw, come on, Doreen! We all know you are in your seventies! We all know that you are in a loving relationship! And we all know that you can write!’

So I set about interviewing many folk from all walks of life. As Evangeline, I listened and recorded their tales. If I considered there was a lesson in the story, I included it in the book.

Not everyone is interested in your love life. Your children probably are not! My children are not! My daughters are in the habit of asking me…threatening me… please don’t mention the book!

Writing Sex in Your Seventies has opened many doors for me. I have appeared on television quite a few times, on Brisbane Extra, and again as a consultant, as well as in a very successful segment on Today Tonight, with me parading the streets of Surfer’s Paradise, dressed to kill, depicted as ‘Sex in the City in Your Seventies.’

I have done a lot of guest speaking, at Probus Clubs, View Clubs, Garden Clubs, Senior’s Clubs, Writers’ Clubs…you name it, all very well acclaimed. I do a ‘book signing’ at the event, my books being very popular. I love it. Some people come to the meeting with pursed, critical lips, only to leave laughing and happy. I get a lot of compliments about my ability to speak at my audience’s level.

The feedback I receive is so enthusiastic. The adjectives used are superlative. How good it makes me feel!

Some say they cannot put the book down. Others say they open it randomly when they are depressed, and read one chapter. ‘What would I have done?’ they might ask themselves. Or ‘What did I do?’

It is not smut. It is simply a ‘good, informative read’.