India to Australia & 4 Continents Thereafter: Rosemary Gillan on Immigrant Life & Relocating as a Hotelier's Wife [Ep 39]

Women Who Walk

Rosemary Gillan grew up in India in the 1960s. A child of mixed-race parents, she was called “Anglo-Indian.” At 13, her family immigrated to Australia where she was called "small and dark." In her late 20s, Rosemary's international relocations began when she married. Over a 16-year period she moved 12 countries with her then hotel-manager husband. Along the way they had two children. But when her marriage ended, and her children had launched, with her IT work, she moved two more countries. Rosemary has documented the highs and lows of her peripatetic life in her writing, including contributions to a number of expat anthologies. In this episode we talk about her heritage, the discrimination her family encountered in India and the discrimination her family then encountered in Australia in the 1970s, and how feeling different, like an outsider, was somewhat diminished as a result of finding her tribe and a sense of belonging as an expat.