Leece Johnson, formerly of Winchester and Moora  |  100x70cm Giclée Fine Photographic Print by Martine Perret (2024)

"I was born at Three Springs Hospital in 1958. We lived on my parents' farm in Winchester (South Carnamah). The main thing I remember about the house in Winchester was looking at all the redback spiders in the rafters in the bedroom as a child going to sleep and not giving a second thought to them ever biting me!

I went to grade one primary school in Carnamah and then my parents sold the farm. We moved to Moora where Dad worked on a farm for another six or seven years, then into Moora town, and to Geraldton in 1971. We were on the farm in Moora when the 1968 Meckering earthquake happened.

I love the country life and I'd like to be living in the country now. I've been in Perth for many years and lived in the Pilbara for some years too as that's where the work happened to be. My partner and I are now looking at moving back to the country. At this stage we are looking at Kalgoorlie, or maybe up north, or even somewhere in the farming areas, where we can find some work or a place to care-take.

I had osteomyelitis when I was very young which is a disease that eats your bones away. It ate my left hip and then eventually I had to have surgery at the children's hospital in Perth. I had my knee operated on in 1970 so both my legs would become even.

When my parents finished with farming and moved to Geraldton they got a job running the high school hostel. Children around the state would come and stay at the hostel while at school. My parents ran that place for about 16 years. I liked living in Geraldton. It was very different, and I loved being next to the ocean and playing so many sports and sailing yachts.

In my late teens or early 20s I discovered that I was transgender. This was the late 1970s and the 80s was discovering more about how I felt in my mind, why I felt this way, and thinking I was the only one in the world who was in the wrong body. Finally in the mid to late 80s, while living in Kambalda, I discovered I was not alone.

I found this advert in The Sunday Times newspaper's personal column saying something about guys that felt like they were women or liked wearing women’s clothing. They had meetings in Perth. I moved to Shay Gap, a mining town of 1,000 people in the Pilbara with my then-partner until the town closed in 1993, so I never got to go to any meetings at that time. During this time they had a monthly magazine and they mailed it out. I found out many years later that I was not the only one in Shay Gap getting this magazine!

We moved to Rockingham and my partner and I went our own ways so I was then single. I was able to meet a lot of other transgender people and learn more about where I was heading in life. Back in the early 1990s there was still no internet. In the very late 90s I knew I had to live full-time and be my true self.

Even with people discriminating and abusing you, just laughing at you, calling you all sorts of names… I still knew I had to learn to block it out as much as I could and live as my true self. To survive I knew I had to be strong mentally and realise that people just did not understand anything about us. It took me 40 years to discover my true self. Nowadays it's very different. If anybody reads this and thinks that maybe they are like me, I am more than happy to chat.

In April 2004 I was interviewed by The West Australian newspaper so people that did not know about me then sure did. I went to Bangkok for surgery on 14 February 2005. The best thing I ever did. This was my first time overseas. I went by myself. After meeting the surgeon and cashing in my traveller’s cheques, it was time for surgery.

Before and after surgery I drove road trains, and I still do. I was the first road train driver to stay in transport and transition. I spent many years in Port Hedland Karratha, Newman, Roebourne, and Cue. I had to fight for acceptance with some companies and others were very good to me.

While in Karratha in 2006 I was interviewed for Truckin Life Magazine. The article came out in February 2007. You would be surprised how many truck drivers confided in me back then about themselves. I have been writing a bit for the Transport Workers' Union (TWU) and helping them to be more accepting of LGBTI people.

I loved driving the long-distance trucks but after I came out people didn't want to talk to me and that made it very hard and lonely. At roadhouses you were treated like a leper. So I gave long distance a miss and did some FIFO type of road train work. Today, some people still don't accept who I am, and that's fine. That's just the way it is. I'm determined to find jobs that accept me for who I am, and I do.

After divorces and mistakes with houses over the years my partner and I ended up buying a caravan instead and I'm happy living in it as I am a gypsy. In 2018 we got involved with an organisation called Ayla in Perth that set up refuges for young transgender kids with nowhere to live. They had five houses at one stage.

I am very keen at some point to spend a bit of time back in the North Midlands checking out all the new things like the Big Tractor and spending time around the old farm machinery photographing it all in its rustic glory with all types of lenses, and maybe even see a few relations. I also love the old wooden fence posts from the early 1900s, barbed wire photos, and spending time at Lake Indoon trying to get photos of birds.

The North Midlands is not busy like a lot of places along the coast or city. It's nice and quiet. It was a good place to grow up."