Growing up, I always defined myself by my goals. One of my earliest memories is racing kids on my street. I’d always win, and usually against boys, often against kids much older than me.
I’ll never forget how proud my parents were of my strength. To them, I seemed more advanced, more capable, almost otherworldly, in comparison to the other kids. And I remember watching the Olympics, determined to one day call myself an Olympian. The title itself sounded like something out of Greek mythology. God like.
I didn’t become an Olympian. I never reached that legendary status. But I did represent my country in sprinting.
At the same time, I loved many other things. I loved easily; I think most children do. As a child, I was obsessed with Disney movies. Later, I fell for action films, and then for weird foreign films, for their unpredictability — and maybe I liked that a little about me too; my unpredictability.
I liked telling stories and I knew I was good at it. I knew when it was my turn to tell stories, kids would listen to me, laugh with me. But whenever I spoke about Hollywood, people would get confused, and I partially get it — I already had one farfetched dream. Yet, when I heard about Arnold Schwarzenegger, who went from sport to movies to politics, I got excited. Someone else had led the way.
So yes, I made it to Greece. Not as a titan, but as a sprinter. I wore the green and gold.
But I also began to notice what it meant to be a woman in sport, even before I knew what it was to be a woman of the world. I realised that being a successful athlete looked different as a woman. We were coached on how to speak in interviews, how to dress, how to present. My 11 year old state title uniform covered less than what Olympic swimmers wear today.
Selection, I learned, wasn’t just about times on the track. I had success in athletics, but when I moved to the US on a full ride scholarship, things fell apart. I was injured. Suddenly, without my sport, I didn’t know who I was.
In the two years I took off, I realised I couldn’t just be “Jane the Athlete”. I needed to be more. And so, after stumbling around like Odysseus after Troy, I eventually became more. I became Jane the scholar, Jane the creative, Jane the hiker, Jane the socialite. When I returned to sport, I tried not to lose myself to obsession again.
Even though I was pursuing athletics, I wanted to make a film: a film about female athletes. I was terrified of dreaming too big, but I did it anyway.
I retired after the 2018 Commonwealth Games trials. I knew it was over. Within weeks, I signed with an acting agent, started classes, and even moved to Vancouver to pursue acting.
I remember hearing a lot of “know your typecast” in acting workshops — as in, know what roles you should go out for. I was told that not all women are leading ladies, and it was something I considered quite deeply. I mean, we’re all leading ladies for our own stories, right? I was most certainly going to be a leading lady in the script I was writing. And I was determined to be the protagonist in this new venture in life too. I told my acting teacher that my typecast was leading lady — more specifically, female athlete. “That’s not a type,” he said.
But Vancouver wasn’t the dream sequence from La La Land. I didn’t book big roles. I worked on passion projects, short films, and bit parts. I missed Australia. When COVID hit, I came home, and to my surprise, the entertainment industry here was deemed “essential”. I booked my first role — small, but it was something. But I didn’t want to be “Partygoer #2.” I wanted to be the leading lady. So, I returned to the story I’d been writing for years. I finalised the script and made the film I wanted to see: The Edge.
Making The Edge was a Herculean task. I raised funds, shot the film, and fought through post production. But like Zeus facing Typhon, I faced my own multi-headed monster: disbelief, sexism, threats, dismissals. I was told repeatedly that no one — not men, not women — would watch a female led sports drama that featured both disability and First Nations content.
Part of being a protagonist is accepting adversity. The leading lady must struggle.
Even whilst finalising the film, I struggled. After finding love and falling pregnant, I endured a brutal pregnancy with hyperemesis gravidarum — something that does sound like one of the twelve labours of Hercules. With six hospitalisations during pregnancy, extreme illness throughout, and even complications after birth, the task felt like a cosmic struggle.
For all my years chasing the image of a Greek goddess, I felt the farthest from divine — or at least I did, until she was born – my beautiful daughter. The week after her arrival, The Edge streamed on Netflix: two births, two creations, in one week.
Then I felt Promethean — how had I been entrusted with creation? It’s tough to follow that thought too far though. Prometheus defied the gods and was punished for his audacity. In many ways, I understood that feeling too. I had defied the unwritten rules of film: don’t try to make a feature too quickly, wait your turn in the industry, apply for funding next year, get small roles before chasing big ones, don’t approach a major agent until you’re already established. But instead of seeing myself as condemned to eternal torment, I prefer to think of myself as someone striving toward humanity.
There is always a risk in overreaching, but perhaps the important thing in life is not triumph, but the struggle. When I reread the Pierre de Coubertin quote on why he founded the modern Olympics before my retirement, it hit me differently to when I’d heard it at other times in my life. He specified that “the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. To spread these principles is to build up a strong and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity.”
The fact that Coubertin ended his sentiments on the essentiality of creating more generosity for humanity has always stayed with me. It’s why I wanted to complete the journey, and I hope others can take similar inspiration from me.