A positive outlook, determination to make every moment count and a genuine interest in caring for her community has taken Meg Trimble, 76, from pony club schoolgirl to working as a station governess who shot crocodiles, pigs and wild dogs to respected board member and senior Queensland Country Women's Association official.
Along the way, 'Crocodile Meg' turned her hand to working on a prawn trawler in the Gulf of Carpentaria for one season and five in the factory, running a marine spare parts business, operating a popular cafe, then a highly successful real estate business.
Once retired, there was no way such a livewire was going to put her feet up and take it easy.
In 2016 she was appointed to the Energy and Water Ombudsman Queensland Advisory Committee where she served for a year.
Since 1997 Meg has given dedicated support to the QCWA which gained a stalwart and articulate member who has held many roles including state vice-president and she currently is FNQ division's past president.
Meg said she's been fortunate to be able to grab life by the scruff and have a red hot go.
"If I've learned nothing else in my life, it's that you should grab every opportunity that comes your way," she said.
"Adventure is really discomfort when it's recollected in tranquility, and all the adventures I have had were not exactly comfortable at the time, but I would not have missed any of them."
And those adventures are worth listening to, from running a small sapphire mine, getting her coxswain ticket on Thursday Island to serving on the Real Estate Institute of Queensland board.
Looking back, Meg says her gusto for life was honed by being outdoors and enjoying what the landscape had to offer.
"When I left school I couldn't wait to go bush and I got a job as a governess on a sheep property outside Muttaburra," she said.
"During the 1965 drought, times were hard and they couldn't afford many staff, so after the kids had finished their schooling I'd go out and help the boss check windmills, start pumps and feed sheep, which I loved.
"I'd grown up in Cairns on a street full of boys and learned to shoot slug guns and .22s, so I could help put injured livestock and animals out of their misery.
In 1967 Meg worked on a cattle property outside Capella and was paid five cents a pound for kangaroo meat.
"There was also a dingo bounty of $2 a pelt and 20 cents a snout for wild pigs," she said
"I was earning $15 a week plus keep, so I could earn over $30 a week from shooting in my spare time."
But it was crocodiles which gave the biggest return on investment and thrills.
"I worked in Kurumba between 1968 to 1973 and the most recent map of that area of the coast in 1969 was the one Mathew Flinders drew when he circumnavigated Australia around 1802," she said.
'We went shooting after work and got $2 per inch across the croc's widest point.
"If you shoot a croc in the water it will sink, so you have to shoot them on the bank or on the snout so they run for the bank, but you had to be careful you didn't ruin the hide - I was always very cautious."
Along the away Meg's activities included shares in a sapphire mine out a Rubyvale outside west of Clermont
"We didn't get a lot of top quality stones but to me it was an adventure," she said.
Working as the cook at Minnamoolka Station at Mt Garnet had the diminutive Meg feeding up to 40 people a day.
"It was not unusual to be up at 3am preparing breakfast, cribs for smoko and I never had any trouble," she said with a grin.
"Cooks are very important people on station, if you upset the cook then look out!"
Hockey was Meg's passion where she played for the state country team which when it played Malaysia in 1965 was the first hockey game televised in Australia.
When an equestrian injury in 1966 scuppered her dream of qualifying for the national team, Meg was momentarily devastated, but picked herself up and "got on with it".
And a chronic fatigue diagnosis in 1989 didn't hold her back either.
"No matter what happens you can push your boundaries all the time, don't be a person defined by an incident, live life to the full," she said.
"Have as many adventures as you can."
