WENDY McCARTHY “I'M NOT DONE YET”

Wendy McCarthy was raised in rural NSW in an era when leadership was a man’s domain. Now 80, the trailblazing feminist, teacher, businesswoman, wife and mother reveals the triumphs and challenges of her wonderful life.

- JULIET RIEDEN 

“MY mother’s greatest fear was always that I would attract too much attention to myself, and be part of the story,” muses Wendy McCarthy. We are sitting in her elegant Sydney home, the walls decked in original Australian art each with a personal story attached, including mesmerising side-by-side paintings of Wendy, age 19, and her mother, age 37.

“She was 18 when I was born. We sort of grew up together and I was probably the perfect first baby and older child because I took responsibility in the family,” Wendy explains, remembering how she and her siblings all sat for artist Louise Cornwall to paint their portraits.

The twinkle in Wendy’s eye as she recalls one of many contradictory life lessons from her mother hints at its inherent irony, for this indomitable Aussie is of course well known for attracting a great deal of attention as a trailblazing feminist, activist and boardroom mover and shaker.

But back then, for Betty [she was actually christened Audrey but hated the name so became Betty as a child and Bette or Bettina as an adult] respectability was everything and her eldest daughter’s involvement in the burgeoning feminist movement of the ’60s and ’70s was a little too outré. “It was not her passion,” smiles Wendy. “However, she would say things to me like, ‘Well, you know that’s not true, why don’t you do something about it?’ She was egging me on in some ways.”