My grandson said after he read my story that I must have lived before the Good Old Days.
Pat Malcolm has been a battler all her life. She was born during the Depression, one of fifteen children in a poor, rural, working- class family who 'begged, borrowed and stole' to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. It was a childhood of innocent fun and wild adventure, and of deprivation, physical abuse and humiliation.
At fourteen Pat Malcolm's childhood ended and her adult life began. In the next fifteen years she worked in various nursing and domestic jobs, had five children and survived nine years in a violent relationship. Then in the early sixties she headed north with the mineral boom and began a love affair with the great North-west. She worked on fishing boats and mine sites, in stock-camps and hotels. She had two more children, made life-long six months in gaol before from the Governor-Genera and spent pardon
First Cuts are Deepest is a story rarely told; a story of disadvantage and hardship, of an ordinary woman whose strength of character, resilience and sense of humour enabled her to battle through in the face of enormous odds.
Cover photograph courtesy R Reece, photographer unknown, from Western Australian Newspapers' Collection.
