Life for Penny Gale is chaotic and hectic, filled with twin wrangling, volunteering at school and running a business – often single handedly while her husband Drew is away working.
“It’s a busy mum life,” she laughed.
“I get up at 5am to go for a walk and get the boys ready for school and on the bus.
“Then my working day begins – contacting retailers, marketing and invoicing.”
At the time of writing, Penny was preparing to open her Fabriculture studio for the Tamborine Mountain Arts Trail for the first time.
She’s a talented artist whose work has ranged from textiles to public art. Through Fabriculture she focuses on inspiring and educating children about Australia’s unique flora and fauna.
It was after taking the twins, Jack and Charlie, now 8, to playgroup and watching the leader pull a toy bilby out of a box and realising they all thought it was a rabbit, that she was inspired to create Fabriculture.
“I started looking for things that were Australian,” Penny said.
“I looked around the boys’ bedroom and there was a fox and an elephant on the wall. All their clothes had cats and foxes on them. Stuff that destroys our native wildlife.
“I got a keen interest in our native wildlife after that and the more I researched, the more interested I became.
“Then you have to look into their habitat, so then comes the plants. There are so many fascinating creatures in the country; I could try and draw every single one and I’d be dead before I get to the end.
“It never gets boring.”
Watching the rainforest burn during the Black Summer Bushfires of 2019/2020 really drove her to work harder to spread the message of the need to protect our natural country.
Recently Penny has been studying water colour painting with fellow local artist, Heather Dale from Patchwork Dog.
She is a firm believer that learning to draw or paint is no different to learning to write or ride a bike.
“You don’t come out of the womb learning how to draw and paint you have to learn how to do it,” Penny explained.
“Learning how to communicate visually is something that’s taught.
“We are free as kids, learning and drawing and proud of what we do, but as we get older it seems to be taken away from us and is not given the same emphasis at school as reading and writing.
“I meet so many people who wish they could do it and I say, you can do it; it’s a taught skill. It’s just practice like learning how to write.”
Before becoming the home of Fabriculture, her studio was where she and Drew held their wedding reception, shortly after making the move to Tamborine from Melbourne in 2013.
“My grandparents used to take me to Tamborine Mountain, so it was quite familiar,” she recalled.
They drove out to Tamborine to inspect their house and Drew announced that was the one before they’d even got out of the car.
“Now you’ll have to bury me here,” she laughed.
Penny is also well-known for the hard work she puts into the Tamborine Mountain State School P&C, where she is chair of the events committee.
Prior to this she was the president of the Tamborine Mountain Community Kindergarten.
“I like to take an active interest in what the boys are doing. It’s hard to get volunteers for anything and there wouldn’t have been a kindy if I didn’t step up,” she shared.
“I find by volunteering and through my yogis I get to spend time with people I may not normally have reason to associate with. By getting to know the stories of a wider selection of my community it becomes a much more interesting world.”
“The P&C brings in a lot of money to the school, which it otherwise wouldn’t have. I want my kids and their friends to benefit from having those opportunities.”
As a hands-on mum with very active young boys Penny spends a lot of time taking them to their extra-curricular activities.
“There is a lot of driving,” she admitted.
Jack and Charlie attend Little Nippers on the Gold Coast and little athletics on the mountain, with Penny doing the age managing for both.
There is not much time left for herself, but Saturday mornings are her “get of jail” card when she finds some stillness at Yoga Under the Bodhi Tree.
Life amongst the rainforest and native animals bring her immeasurable joy and Penny said she feels very blessed and loves the fact most people here feel the same way.
She hopes the community will continue to respect the environment and not disturb the nocturnal wildlife and plants with too much development, including things like installing streetlights.
And she hopes she can continue to educate future generations on our unique wildlife.
“If I can bring some awareness to people, I’ve done my job, especially to kids,” Penny said.
