At Peace With The World

There are inspirational stories. Then there is Dr Gillian Claire “Gill” Hicks, AM, MBE, FRSA.

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Born in Adelaide and battle-hardened in London, Hicks is the founder of the UK-based not-for-profit organisation M.A.D. for Peace and the owner of the Australian consulting firm M.A.D. Minds. To help pay the bills, Hicks is also a highly sought-after motivational speaker, as well as an author and the trustee of several cultural organisations.

The peripatetic Hicks, who returned to live in Adelaide in 2012, started on the lucrative speaking tour after the shocking terrorist bombing attack on the London train she was taking to work on July 7, 2005. Instilled with an incredible life force, Hicks, who was employed by a British government quango, the Design Council, was the last living victim rescued. With her legs amputated below the knee and other severe injuries, Hicks was not expected to live when admitted to St Thomas’ Hospital without a name and identified only as “One Unknown”.

Hicks, who’d never ventured outside Adelaide, trod the familiar expatriate path to London in 1991. While still a teenager, Hicks lost both her parents within a year. It was her mother’s death at 53 from cancer that set Hicks on the road to London. “It was a huge shock, and rather than inheriting anything we had to pay the debt,” she recalls. “That was quite a rude awakening into the realities of life and death at that moment.”

With just enough money for a plane ticket, Hicks admits there was a “level of naivety” about migrating to the Old Dart. “I completely believed that London is where I would find who I was meant to be, and with that the success and I guess fortune.”

Devoid of tertiary qualifications, Hicks, who has an honorary doctorate from London Metropolitan University, arrived in Britain as a severe economic downturn hit. With employment opportunities slim, she was forced to scribble up the ubiquitous menu chalkboards found outside a bevy of London pubs.