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DI THORLEY
Mayor of Toowoomba
It's a cold winter's day in Brisbane and Di Thorley, standing on the street outside a cafe, is out of her element - she's a bushie in the city, a big fish in Toowoomba visiting the big pond of the state capital. And yet here, too, she has her fans. A passer-by wearing a black skivvy and smoking a cigarette stops to tell her how much he admires her work. "Thanks love," she says cheerfully. "Can I bludge a ciggy off you?"
Thorley, 57, mayor of the city of 90,000 people that sits atop the Great Dividing Range in Queensland, became known around the country last year as a champion of recycled water when Toowoomba became the first city in Australia to ask people to vote on whether they wanted to recycle sewage for drinking water.
But there's a lot more to Thorley than her strong views on that subject. She's a self-made businesswoman, a champion of multiculturalism, and a loving mother and grandmother.
She's done it tough, too. When she arrived in Toowoomba in the mid '80s she was a single mother of three young children with no career, no formal education, and no self-confidence after leaving a violent and abusive marriage. She made ends meet by working as a pub cook, which developed into a catering business. As her business grew, Thorley had her fair share of clashes with the council and soon decided to run for office herself. She was elected as a councillor in 1997, but soon realised the real power lay with the mayor. She ran against the then mayor, Tony Burke, winning easily in 2001, and was re-elected in 2004.
Thorley has been a firm advocate of multiculturalism in a city known for its conservative rural roots. Part of her motivation is her identification with outsiders, based on her childhood experience of acquiring what she calls the "real woggy name" of Pylypiw when her mother remarried.
Thorley has had overtures from both major parties to enter state or federal politics, but she's had enough of public life and in June announced she wouldn't stand again as mayor. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie made his feelings clear when he said: "Di Thorley was a great...