Interesting Australian Catholics: Mum Shirl

Image: Olga: a 38-year-old Marrawarra woman, spent her early childhood in the bush of south-west New South Wales until she was adopted by Wiradjuri woman Mum Shirl. Olga then lived in Sydney’s inner west and attended a Catholic school in Glebe, but the all-girls school didn’t suit her: ‘The environment was all wrong’, she says. At 16, Olga left school and drifted onto the streets of Kings Cross. ‘I drank a lot to kill the pain’, she says of her time there. Olga has four children and doesn’t like to remember the past, especially her childhood in the bush: they are ‘only sad memories’. (2013 Jennifer Blau)