Having overcome numerous challenges in the past, the former mayor of Lismore, Jenny Dowell, is currently facing a major health crisis. She sat down with The Echo to reflect on the changes she’s seen across the rainbow region, and consider the future. This is part one of a two part feature.
Originally from Melbourne, Jenny Dowell came to local government relatively late, and then rose fast, spending 12 turbulent years on Lismore City Council, including eight years as mayor. She was awarded an OAM for services to local government and the community in 2017.
Among many other contributions, she’s been the president of Social Futures and of NOROC, the Northern Rivers Regional Organisation of Councils, as well as being an active supporter of the Northern Rivers Rail Trail, the Red Cross, Country Labor, NORPA, and a patron of numerous organisations devoted to making this region a better place to live.
Since retiring from local government, she’s been a mayoral mentor with Local Government NSW, travelling across the state, and is also known for her involvement with community theatre and parkrun.
Always a very active person, she recently completed almost 5 km of the Darrel Chapman Fun Run, despite her latest health challenges, which is where our conversation began.
For people who don’t follow you on social media, are you able to explain what’s happened?
‘Of course, I’m very public about this, and I have been from the start. So 17 years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and it was four days after I was elected as mayor.
‘So I did the mastectomy and chemotherapy and the whole bit, and then seven years of oral medication, and truly believed I was cancer free. All the advice was, “The chance of you having cancer is the same as if you’ve never had it”.
‘So I’ve taken up bushwalking, and I was leading a group of people walking in the Warrumbungles in March this year. I had a sore back, and I assumed it was because the walking was tough. I thought, I’ve pulled a muscle. But after about a month, it wasn’t any better. So I went to the doctor – my own doctor wasn’t available – and I said, “Look, Panadol is not cutting it. I need something stronger.”
‘The doctor said, “You’ve had cancer, I reckon we should have a CT scan.” So that was Monday the 12th of May, and I got a call on the Tuesday from my doctor saying, ‘Come in and see me.”
‘So when she said, “It’s not pretty.” I said, “Yeah, I know, I’ve got scoliosis.” She said, “No, you’ve got cancer.” It was all up and down my spine. So that started a whirlwind of CT scans, MRIs, PET scans, all sorts of tests to see what the situation was, and then a referral to an oncologist who said the blood tests were not conclusive, but it’s assumed that it’s come from the breast cancer.
‘But it’s not in my organs. It’s not in my lymph system. It’s only in my only spine, from my neck to the base, coccyx and my pelvis and my hips. It’s clearly been there for a long time, because there are scar tissues from the cancer.’
But your body is somehow holding it there, it’s not spreading?
‘Well, it hadn’t, so I had a bout of radiotherapy on the worst part. Years ago, they used to treat the new cancer as a separate cancer, but I’m being treated as if it’s breast cancer. So I’m now on hormone-blocking chemo tablets for as long as I last, which the doctor at this stage is saying could be five years. It might not be, and who knows what kind of advances might happen in those five years. So that’s where I am at the moment.
‘The medication has terrible side effects, and I’ll be honest, early on I investigated voluntary assisted dying because I couldn’t get out of bed. I was in excruciating pain. I’m on Oxycontin, and I’m on liquid morphine top-up, if I need it. So, strong stuff, and the pain is still cutting through. But I don’t need the morphine much. I’ve got it there beside the bed. It tastes vile. Sue Page, who was a local doctor here, said, “Try coating your tongue with a smear of Vegemite…”
‘Lots of people have been helping, but I’ve had gastric reflux, I’ve had terrible nausea. I’ve lost 13 kilos…
‘People tell me I look well, but I’m bent over. My posture is not good, and I use one of my walking poles from my hiking days if I’m doing any significant walking. It’s good that people see me and think I look okay. That helps. I don’t want to see reflected in people’s faces pity, or shock, that I look really bad. So I’m pleased about that.
‘My hair is not going to fall out, but it’s thinning, and my weight has stabilised now because my medication has been reduced. I don’t feel like eating, but when I do eat, I can at least taste food.’
You seem to be continuing your tradition of public service in the way you approach this – is that to help other people who are going through similar things?
‘Yes, and people who say to me, “You’ll get through this”. Well, part of my role, I feel, is to be upfront and say, “No, I’m not going to get through this.”
‘I’m living with cancer. Before I felt like a survivor, and now I’m living with cancer. It’s been a huge shock to women like me who had breast cancer and who are now five, ten years down the track.
‘My message is, don’t ignore anything that you feel is not right, because it can come back. Hopefully it won’t for anyone else. I wouldn’t want this on anyone, but be aware that it can come back. I was very open, as I said, first time around. I want to be open this time round as well.’
So have you withdrawn from all your committees and other work?
‘Well, interestingly, I finished my paid work only in December. I was travelling around the whole of NSW with local government, training councillors and mayors in their duties. It seemed right to finish at the end of last year. I was also a mentor for mayors and councillors throughout the state, and I’d already decided, look, that’s enough. I retired from Lismore Council in 2016, so it would be better to get other people who are fresher and just out of the system.
‘I’ve also given up my theatre work, and since this diagnosis, I’ve given up a bit more. I’m stepping down from the board of the Conservatorium this month, partly because of cancer, and I strongly believe in renewal, so I’m stepping down from that. I’m still Secretary of a suicide prevention charity locally. I’m on the Northern Rivers Rail Trail Committee.
‘My Red Cross training and active work in the community is on hold only because I couldn’t last more than two hours doing something – I really need to lay down or rest… Hopefully my energy levels and pain and nausea will stabilise.
‘I’m on a worldwide Facebook group for people on this particular drug and there are lots of people who are very active and leading sort of “normal” lives, so that gives me some hope that things could improve, but I know it’s not realistic to do those things now, so I’ve just put a few things on hold.’
You’ve been a very important part of the Northern Rivers community for a long time, but I know you came from Melbourne originally. Why did you make the decision to come north?
‘I was a teacher of deaf children, particularly specialising in teaching profoundly deaf, very young children to speak. So I was working in a program at a school that used sign language, but with parents who were deaf, who had a deaf child, and they wanted that child to speak as well. So it was a multilingual approach, teaching two and three year olds to speak. I was also lecturing at Melbourne University in special education.
‘My husband Ron worked for the Victorian transport system, but he’d also been doing his Masters in tourism. He was offered a job at the new tourism school in Southern Cross University. I’d never been here, but we moved here in 1991 with two young kids, and the rest is history!’
Fast-forwarding to her time in local government, Jenny Dowell was elected to Lismore City Council in 2004.
I understand the late Ros Irwin was something of a mentor for you?
‘She was, absolutely. We sat next to each other at Council for that term, and I learned a great deal from her. That was a difficult term…
‘I always look at Council being progressive or conservative, and we had a very conservative Council led by Merv King, who I admired in many ways.
‘I followed him in how he chaired meetings, and learned a lot from him, and but our politics were very different.’
Were you always a Labor person?
‘I didn’t join the Labor Party until 1998, and it was when Pauline Hanson had won something like twelve seats in Queensland. I remember thinking that could happen at the federal election coming up in that year, and I thought, “What are you going to do about that?”
‘So Joy Matthews, who’d been mayor of Maclean, was running as the Labor candidate, so I rocked up to her office in Lismore. She had a small office, and I said, “I’m here to help”. So I door knocked with her. I still didn’t join the party until about the time of the election, and later became secretary of the local branch and got more involved, but often behind the scenes.
‘Then, when we talking about who was going to run for Lismore Council in 2003 we were talking about putting the team together, I said, “Put my name down as candidate five or six on the list. I don’t know enough about it, so put my name down for one of the lower positions.
‘Then I thought, someone’s going to ask me about Council. And I’d only ever been to one Council meeting, it was about an issue to do with the Neighborhood Center where I was a volunteer and the needle program that was there. I thought, they’ll ask me about other things and I have no idea. So I started going to Council meetings. You could pick up a copy of the business paper from the library. I studied that.
‘I went to Council meetings and I saw appalling things; you know, councillors falling asleep, someone who opened the envelope with the business paper in it during the meeting, so he clearly hadn’t read it. And I thought, God, this is not rocket science. But I found it fascinating, the range of stuff.
‘So I went to the Labor Party meeting and just said, I’d really love to do this. I want to put my hand in the ring for one of the electable positions, which is one or two. I expected to have a vote, a ballot about that, where the candidates would go up in front of all the branch members and the members would decide, but blow me down, the two other candidates both said, “We reckon you’d be more electable. We’ll step aside and you can be number one.”
‘So that’s how I stood for Council the first time, and I got elected.’
And then you became mayor in 2008, and that coincided with your breast cancer diagnosis, as you said. A lot of people were astonished, and inspired, that you continued, under those circumstances. What was it like for you?
‘It was a great distraction! I remember being sick and nauseous after having the mastectomy and then starting treatment. But I had a distraction. So I would either close my office door and lay down for 20 minutes in the afternoon before we went into a Council meeting, or, because I’m close to Council, I would come home and have a nap for half an hour, 20 minutes. Half an hour was enough and I could go back.
‘I lived on ginger and ginger beer, you know, for the nausea. But I had a purpose. I had something I desperately wanted to do, and wanted to do well. So it was my saviour having something to do and occupy myself over those long hours, so I wasn’t really thinking about how awful I felt.’
And what do you look back on now as the big things from your your time in local government, the things that you’re proud of? Obviously, the gas thing was huge. But there were many other issues.
‘The gas thing was huge, but there were also more intangible things, like finally getting the money for the art gallery. I set out with a strong belief that Council was there for everyone. We weren’t just there for the ratepayers. We weren’t just there for the business people.
‘We were there for the people in public housing. We were there for homeless people. We were there for the LGBTQIA+ community. We were there for young people. We weren’t just there for the people who voted for us. I was strongly of the belief that we should embrace everyone.
‘That meant reaching out to young people to ask what they wanted. It meant embracing the Tropical Fruits New Year’s Eve festival not just because it was the right thing to do, but it was economically good for Lismore. We showed the rainbow community that they belonged and they were important to us.
‘So those things you can’t measure, but I really strongly believe that we are there for everyone, and I wanted everyone to feel that they had a voice and some interest in Council, rather than us being there for vested interests.’
Lismore really became a progressive beacon through that time, and your courage extended to supporting the Bentley blockade and many other things. Was that difficult personally?
‘Well, one of the other things that happened is a trailer came to Lismore and parked down opposite the tennis courts. It was a far right Christian group, very anti the rainbow community. And I went there with a group of people and said, “You are not welcome here. Please leave our community.”
‘It’s about standing up for the things that you think are important personally, but also for our community. The [CSG] blockade time was very interesting and very difficult. I had a really difficult relationship with [former state member, the Nationals’] Thomas George over that. At public events, neither of us let that show, we did our roles, but it was very difficult.
‘I went down to Glenugie [gas blockade, near Grafton], and it was clear that the mayor at the time, now the local member, Richie Williamson, did not appreciate my presence as a mayor from outside, going there to the Clarence Valley. He was not happy that I overstepped my boundary. And I can understand that. So when Bentley happened, I didn’t go for a long time.
‘Interestingly, I was at the Casino launch of the locally-made TV series, Gods of Wheat Street, and I’ve known John Walker, who was the general manager there [at Richmond Valley Council]. I’ve known him for a long, long time. We went to school together, at a really rough high school in the industrial belt of eastern Melbourne.
‘Anyway, he knew my views, and I said, “Look, I would love to go to Bentley, but I don’t want to hurt the feelings of Ernie Bennett, who was the mayor [of Richmond Valley] at the time.”‘
As it turned out, Ernie didn’t have a problem with his neighbouring mayor intruding a few hundred metres beyond her council boundary, which meant Jenny Dowell was able to get more actively involved in stopping the threatened gasfield just upstream of Lismore.
As she recalls: ‘I’d already been cooking and sending food and all sorts of other things, I gave them a vintage, proper esky, but I couldn’t actually go there until then, so that was funny.
‘When I met with [then NSW Minister for Planning] Brad Hazzard, in my office, I had all the gasfield-free declaration scrolls from the various communities, from when Annie Kia and her team first started. ‘They were all around the room, hundreds of them. And when he left my office, I said, “Oh, excuse me, minister. Have you noticed these scrolls?”
‘I said, ‘These are all the people who don’t want coal seam gas.” And he said, “They’re going to get it anyway.” And I said, “We’ll see.” And so I made that public. I sat on it for a couple of days, but I thought that was so important for our community to know that the minister was not taking any account of it, so I declared it, and he said in public that I broke confidentiality.
‘Well, there was nothing confidential about that comment. Our paths crossed several times after that, when I’d go to a launch or something, and he’d be there, and he’d say, “Ah, my favorite mayor.” And I’d say, “Oh, my favorite minister.” And we’d have a laugh. But yeah, I was really strongly supportive of the blockade at Bentley, and of course, celebrating the great victory.’
I see you’ve still got your Lock the Gate sign out the front, but recently we’ve seen the community’s gasfield-free signs being taken down by Council right across the shire of Lismore, along with the nuclear-free signage. That’s been shocking to a lot of people. How do you feel about it?
‘I’m really so disappointed in that. It was couched in terms of, “We don’t want a negative message. We don’t want to say we voted no, we don’t want a nuclear-free zone. We don’t want anything negative. We want positive.” But it was nothing to do with that.
‘The move to take the gas-free signs down was led by a few extreme right wing councillors who want to dismiss the community’s activism over that and dismiss it by saying it wasn’t 87 per cent opposed, it was much less than that. I know that the vote for that poll was similar to the number of people who voted for mayor.
‘So almost everyone who went in to get a ballot paper and filled it out did that third vote as well. We know that of the total number of people who voted, something like 3,000 eligible voters don’t vote on the day. They didn’t vote for me, they didn’t vote for other councillors, and they therefore they didn’t vote for the gas poll.
‘So to use those figures and twist them, and to say so few people voted is simply incorrect. The misinformation that was swirling around when that decision was made to remove the signs was appalling. But we know what happened, and we still see the signs in people’s backyards.’
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