Women's networks are a necessary part of life. A mixture of empathy and brainstorming can move mountains.

The dialogue between women is a rich field, but change does not come without a lot of reading, asking, listening, risk-taking and hard work.

Beautifully Bleak. I likened the hills encircling Canberra to the sea. They, like the sea, could be a sunny beguiling blue, or deep and inky. They could be distant and mysterious, or beautifully bleak as the wind tore across the plains from their snowy peaks. The hills were ever changing like the sea.

It is important to learn from other women. We have a lot to offer and to learn from each other out of our separate and common experience. The sisterhood (including the boilers - the old chooks!) is important to me. The dialogue between women is a rich field, but change does not come without a lot of reading, asking, listening, risk taking and hard work.

I have had the experience common to many women, of needing to define myself and to find my self-esteem as a person, not simply as somebody's wife or mother.

I think that women of my generation have had a real need to form networks and friendships because it's been, as they say, a man's world, and women have felt excluded and isolated to a large degree. When women get together in numbers their strength compounds and is seen and felt by themselves and others.

It is very important that we look at what we CAN do, rather than what is impossible to do.