Meghan Gillespie isn’t your typical Showgirl entrant.
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She has no real farm background and is more familiar with a traffic jam than fig jam – a self confessed “city girl”.
But if compassion and caring and a desire to help are traits the Maitland Showgirl judges are looking for, then the East Maitland 22-year-old will have to be right in the mix.
“It’s funny, I grew up watching the Showgirl and like so many little girls, I always wanted to be one,” she said.
“We’d go to the Show every year – it was a big day on the family calendar – and I always thought it was for all the pretty girls.
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“But now I want to do it for a different reason.
“I want to show my students that it’s not just about beauty on the outside.
“I want them to understand that there’s beauty on the inside too, and in many way that’s more important.
“I want them to understand that just getting in and having a go is important, too.”
Meghan’s a Maitland girl through and through. She grew up Tenambit, went to Maitland High, and these days is employed two days a week at Mai-Wel, running cooking classes and helping with household skills for adults that can often have challenging behaviour.
The other three days of the working week she’s at Kurri High School teaching wellbeing classes.
Wellbeing?
“It covers a lot of things … mental health, drug and alcohol abuse, bullying … things that weren’t necessarily a factor in previous generations,” she explains.
“But these are things that are very much a part of young people’s lives these days.”
If there’s a common thread with Meghan it’s compassion. The desire to make the lives of others around her that little bit better.
She sounds surprised when I put the word to her.
“Compassion? I’m not sure … I try to show it I guess. I know I have a job that has some really good days and some very bad days,” she says.
“But the good days are incredible. You feel so good when you have helped someone and you know you’ve made a difference.
“And the bad days … well, they can be pretty tough for sure.”
Standing in front of class – whether it be a cooking class at Mai Wel or her wellbeing students at Kurri Kurri High, the thought of public speaking obviously doesn’t hold too many fears, I say.
She breaks into a laugh.
“Ask my friends. They’ll all tell you I can speak under water.
“But public speaking, thinking on your feet, that’s a different thing.
“We’ll see.”
Showgirl entries close Thursday, January 18 at noon.