Last week I spoke to a group at the Chamber of Commerce in Ballarat – the audience were quite intrigued with the stories of the Pilbara.

One interesting question was how to deal with the indigenous problem, to which I responded that education was probably the only answer at this stage.

It was great to have the opportunity to talk about the issue and about the Pilbara in general…

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StoryCatcher is an ABC project that gathers, preserves and shares the life stories of ordinary Australians.

In this episode Melva Stone remembers what it was like as the first female resident of the West Australian mining town of Newman. The pink nappies were the least of it.

She went on to become a trailblazer in more ways than one.