Adventurous Women: How Sue Hile’s quest to find herself sparked a quest to help other women

Soulless. That is where life for Sue Hile was at in 2007, despite having a pair of healthy boys, a loving husband and a generally happy existence. Her “gypsy soul” was lost and she told her family she was off on a three-month backpacking sabbatical in Thailand to go and find it. “I was getting itchy and restless,” Mrs Hile said. “I was seeing how cynical, sour and ungrateful people were in their jobs and didn’t want to end up like that. I felt my marriage was stale, but I didn’t want to walk away from it. I was depressed and needed to go away and sort myself out. “I needed to go away from everything I had to find what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It was about finding Sue again and finding the joy in life.” Her husband Brad eventually relented on his initial concern and gave his blessing to use her paid long-service leave to facilitate her soul-finding trip. She partied and walked mountains, while staying virtually connected to her family. Brad even joined her at the latter part of the journey to climb part of Mount Everest together before her altitude sickness cut the base camp bid short. On return to Australia, Mrs Hile was struck by the realisation that there must have been many more women feeling the same life emptiness. It led the the Adventurous Women travel business she started soon after, which has now brought scores of like-minded women together out of various worlds that were dragging them down. She said she “bluffed” her way through her first trip to Egypt with 12 women, including her mother on her first-ever overseas journey. During the trip, one of the travellers had their handbag stolen from a restaurant, another got a serious bout of food poisoning and they feared they would be killed in the desert by a mad bus driver. “I had to go somewhere where the women would not go by themselves and that was the beginning,” she said. “It started to tell me my vision was sound and I wasn’t alone. It really floated my boat to give them something. I realised the importance of nurturing a community and leaving no one out.” Mrs Hile was just five when her parents Terry and Barb Dutton decided in 1969 to move their family west from their Victorian home in Cobram, as her uncle John needed her father to join him in his building business in the WA Wheatbelt town of Dalwallinu. She said growing up in the town - as well as annual Christmas holiday trips across the Nullarbor - had set her mind to outdoors adventure. “Just being able to ride the motorbikes out in the bush, just that freedom,” she said. “At the drop of a hat, dad would take us camping. Everything we did with him was an adventure and he was a huge influence of me with the way he’d just wing it and it would all come together. “That gypsy was somewhere in me. But I knew if I stayed in Dally I’d marry a farmer and I’d be bored s..tless.” Instead, she hooked up in a relationship with a Williams roustabout who had a similar adventurous bent and started living a robust life. “It was all about going to rodeos and boozing, marroning and laying by the fire at Wellington Dam and going to sleep - it was crazy times,” she recalled. In a subsequent trip around Australia at age 21, getting random work as they went, Ms Hile secured a barmaid job at the Northern Territory’s rough-and-ready Berrimah Hotel before they returned to Perth and split. She then became a hospital ward clerk and met her now-husband Brad. “It was rocky to start with, but mainly because he was a decent bloke and I used to go out with ferals,” she laughed. “But we ended up together and have been married for 30 years.” Their sons Dylan and Jordan are now 28 and 26 respectively. Adventurous Women grew from meet-and-greet sessions in local pubs and in Mrs Hile’s loungeroom, to overseas trips to destinations including Nepal, Borneo, Thailand, Morocco, Vietnam, New Zealand and Japan. Then there were more local and affordable journeys abseiling down cliffs in Wilyabrup, caving in Yallingup, camping at Yalgoo’s Gabyon Station, four-wheel driving at Yeagarup Dunes in Pemberton and much more. Campfire honesty sessions, enhanced by more than just the odd beverage, added a wholesome edge to the trips and Mrs Hile started chapters in different States of Australia to add diversity when the global coronavirus pandemic hit. “I believe that if you challenge yourself and you’re in a supportive community, you’re more likely to embrace the challenge,” said Mrs Hile, who admitted a deep love for the red dirt of the WA Goldfields. “One thing that really makes me tick is getting people out there to empower them and help them feel good about themselves. I’ve had some people say Adventurous Women has changed their lives and I’m thinking, ‘Well, it changed my life, too’. “It’s had a lot of impact on a lot of people and me and I’m quietly proud. It’s about having a sense of belonging and being a part of something bigger than yourself.” The positive impact of Mrs Hile’s adventurous offerings is best described in the experience of convert Maria Taylor, whose husband Bevan was killed in 2019 when he crashed his hang-glider into a Westonia paddock while practising for the WA championships. Mrs Taylor had already been part of AW before her husband’s tragic death and it became a critical crutch as she plotted her way through acute grief. She said it was the group’s “No Princess” policy that resonated greatly with her. The strict adherence to that policy made memorable moments such as the reaction of two male French backpackers who were parked on a roadside near Karijini National Park and watching a busload of 12 women “mooning” them as they whizzed by - a bawdy act the men reciprocated at a later stop. “I’m not exactly sure when I joined AW, but I’m pretty certain I’ll remain a member until my legs refuse to carry me,” Mrs Taylor said. “They say everyone needs a tribe - and I’ve found mine.” Mrs Taylor said Mrs Hile and her group had been “incredibly supportive” in the difficult times immediately after her husband’s death and encouraged her to keep a booking to walk with them on Spain’s iconic Camino de Santiago. “Seven months after Bevan’s passing, I somehow I made it out the door and onto that plane to Spain,” she said. “I think I cried most of the way from Perth to Leon. Cried because I was exhausted, cried because I hated my new life, cried because my kids would never have a dad again, cried because I was doing this without Bevan when he was meant to be sitting next to me and now I had to sit next to strangers. Cried because I was scared of the future and mostly just cried because I missed him with every fibre of my being. “But I knew this was something I had to do and walking the Camino from Lyon to Santiago was cathartic. With each step I learnt to breathe again. I reminded myself to be present and take in the beauty around me and every now and then even let myself smile. “I might have even laughed. It had been so long I’d forgotten what it felt like to have a rush of endorphins coursing through your body. I slowly came back to life, one step at a time. I could finally feel something other than pain.” Mrs Taylor said several trips since with AW have helped her grow more resilience and to find joy again in her life.