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Feature
16 | iNarrabri Magazine | October 2016
Libby McPhee - Narrabri
“Yes, I was a nun. In the Catholic Church at
the Sacred Heart convent in Rose Bay. I was
Sister McPhee. We went by our surnames
in our particular group. People have lots of
stories about nuns... I went to Sydney for
the last years of my secondary school at the
convent of the Sacred Heart at Rose Bay. I
went back there and entered the convent
when I was nineteen. I did teacher training
and spent about five years teaching primary
school in Melbourne and eventually went to
Egypt and spent sixteen years over there.”
“It was wonderful. We had a wonderful
community life. Spoke French most of the
time and I learned Arabic. Worked with
young girls. It’s improving now but then
they stayed at home and helped the family
and then they went off and got married
so there was this desire with some to have
some sort of education for the young girls.
So we built up little development centres
and a lot of the time I worked in that.”
“Over in Egypt I was Soeur Libby. Soeur
is French for sister. Hardly anyone spoke
English. We had lots of French people, a
smattering of Americans, somebody from
England, a Dutch girl and me. The rest
were French and Spanish people. So, it was
a good international experience. People
were wonderful. It was wonderful. I had a
fabulous time but eventually, I don’t know,
I needed to come home. I loved it but it just
came to an end.”
“I was born born in Cowra and one of six
children. My youngest sister, Annie, lives
here and my mother lived here so that’s why
I came here to live when I retired. I used to
work for Tafe. I retired from teaching
English as a second language in Sydney
which I did for about 20 years. Nineteen
years, actually. The branch was called
Outreach and I’d go around to different
suburbs, mainly the eastern suburbs.
It was fabulous. I loved it. But I got very
tired in the end and I didn’t feel creative any
more so I was ready to retire. Since I retired
and came up here and into this little unit
where my mother used to live. That was the
beginning of a new chapter in my life.”
“I call myself an artist, now. My artistic life
started when I went to a community college
course on photography. I’d just got a big, old
dslr from my uncle who’d died and when
I went to this course I learned about the
elements of design. Composition, texture,
shape and lines and light and all those
things. So, that was the beginning. Little by
little I went in the direction of using all the
elements of design and that’s my great love
in photography now. I love scenery and I
love everything else but what really makes
me tick is all the little architectural abstracts.
Lines and light. Light transforms things.
That really excites me. It’s magic.”
photo: John Burgess
Words & Photography by Namoi based
professional photographer, John Burgess.
To contact John, phone 0423 690 586 or via Humans of the Namoi