Inspirational
Australian Women
“The idea for Inspirational Australian Women came to me after receiving a copy of the Wakefield Press 2020 release, Trailblazers. Trailblazers tells the stories of 100 inspiring South Australian women.
My thoughts centred on celebrating the lives and work and achievements of women, nationally. This, Inspirational Australian Women, will be an ongoing part of The Last Post. The women celebrated within these pages will come from an array of fields. You will be amazed at their stories. The fight for a ‘fair go’ for women continues today, with women still paid less and underrepresented in the top echelons of business and politics. So here it is, Inspirational Australian Women. We aim to shine a light on the breadth of achievements of Australia’s women.”
– Greg T Ross, Editor
Pauline Menczer
– INTERVIEW –
Pauline Menczer (born 21 May 1970) is an Australian surfer. She won the 1988 Women’s Amateur World Title and the 1993 Women’s World Championship and has been a long-standing competitor on the world championship tour. Her story is featured alongside other women trailblazers on the formative professional tour in the new documentary Girls Can’t Surf. Greg T Ross: Pauline, thank you so much for joining us here at the Last Post podcast. How’ve you been? Pauline Menczer: Great. Really happy after everything that’s happened lately. GTR: Yeah. How important was the success of the campaign to fund that prize money that you didn’t get for winning the World Surfing title in ‘93? How important was that for you? PM: For me, it was really important. I mean, the money’s a bonus, don’t get me wrong, but just the recognition, because for years and years being at the top of my sport and at my time, the 20 years I was on tour, I was one of the top winners, I’d won 20 major tournaments and eight of the other QS events. And I never really got recognized for it. And the last couple of years I’ve been unwell and I was laying around feeling sorry for myself and I thought, “Wow, I kind of feel like I achieved a lot in my career and didn’t get any recognition for it.. And then now for it to come along and the GoFundMe to reach its goal, it really showed me ... To see how quick it reached 25,000 and showed me how many people actually have always supported me within the community, but not necessarily within
the surfing community. I mean, not the community, surfing sponsors. Because I did recognize quite a lot of the names that helped out and to get that kind of money that fast, I felt like it was people that knew my story.
go to Europe, I was in America and I’m like, “Oh no, I’m not going to be able to get there.” And then I’d turn around and win that event. And that seemed to happen to me quite a lot. So I did well under a lot of pressure.
GTR: Yeah. Did you feel the love?
GTR: You bring up a good point, we’ll speak about how you won and the things you had to through to win and actually to stay on the tours, Pauline. But that, was it a visualization of winning or was it just that things happened to fall into place at the right time for you? You just mentioned about not having enough money to get to America or worrying about that at least and then winning a title on the back of that worry. Do you think that brings out the best in you when you’re in a corner?
PM: Oh, absolutely. The love has been incredible and I think it’s been a big part of helping me heal at the moment as well. GTR: Yeah. And when you bring up the point about the number of titles you’ve won, was it 20 WCT and then eight of the WQS, I think it was? PM: Yeah, correct. GTR: Yeah. Which I think, I interviewed Layne Beachley a few years ago, but I think that’s the most from an Australian woman surfer outside of Layne? PM: Yeah. I’m not sure what the record is now but for a long time I was on par with, I think Kelly Slater, Andy Irons, I remember being on par with them. I think I won that much because I had to, so my mom always taught me there’s a positive in every negative. And the negative was, I didn’t have the support but I was really successful because I had to be. There was times that I had $100 left and I’d have to
6 THE LAST POST – 2021 ANZAC DAY EDITION
PM: I think my arthritis was bad quite often because of the stress of having no money, so that was hard. And that was probably my biggest challenge is overcoming pain and stiffness and just trying to get my body to be normal every day. It was such a challenge that the competing side of it, when I put my mind to it, I was able to achieve what I needed to achieve because like I said, my daily struggles were so hard that once I put my mind to winning, I just seem to do it quite well.
