Pru Wawn born on April 4, 1956 at the War Memorial Hospital in Waverley to Geoff and Patsy Wawn. Ten months later, her brother Bill was born.
After a short stint in Melbourne, the family settled on the peninsula, building a home on Hilltop Rd in Avalon and later moving to Hillside Rd in Newport.
Pru attended Newport Primary School and was in the inaugural year at Barrenjoey High School.
Pru Studied Art Education/Teaching at Uni NSW and studied at Alexander Mackie CAE.
In her working life Pru was an Art Teacher at Mosman High School.
Pru was also an environment and social justice activist, and Greens member. Pru stood as the Greens candidate at local, state and federal government elections.
In 2019, when standing as the Greens candidate for Mackellar Ms Wawn said she attended Newport Public School and Barrenjoey High, then studied visual arts, and taught in public high schools for more than 35 years before retiring two years ago.
At the launch, Pru also spoke about biodiversity on the Barrenjoey Peninsula and threats to its marine environment from gas exploration and marine plastics.
“Closer to home, MEC resources, the company holding an offshore gas exploration licence for the area from Newcastle to the Northern Beaches, is keen to conduct more seismic testing at the earliest opportunity,” she said.
“The search for ever more gas is encouraged by a federal government that has seriously botched the gas export industry and left the domestic market short,” she said.
“Northern Beaches people are pretty much united against gas drilling and testing off the coast.
“This community will not accept such a risk to our beautiful beaches, to the fisheries and rich marine life, like the migrating whales and the dolphins.”
NSW Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi with Mackellar candidate Pru Wawn
Ethan Hrnjak, then Greens candidate for Mackellar at Avalon on March 19, 2022 with Pru
Pru was always an outspoken and vigilant campaigner for that which cannot speak up for itself; the habitat, waters and air that supports all life, as well as community.
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As a foundation member of Protect Pittwater the design for the very popular ‘Bring Back Pittwater Council’ logo and stickers, based on the old Pittwater Council design, came from Pru’s skills.
Pru was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease two and a half years ago. She passed peacefully at home listening to a favourite Spotify playlist in August 2024, her loved ones at her side.
Recently a Tribute and Celebration of her life was held at Avalon Beach SLSC, overlooking her home beach.
The following insights were spoken and have been kindly shared so we can all honour and remember an indefatigable volunteer full-time worker for a better world.
Mum
By Ruby Wawn
I arrived in the world on 5 January 1995 after a gruelling 36-hour labour. Mum used to joke that her life was ruled by school bells, as I was born just when the bell would have been ringing at Mosman High to start her day. At 39, I was her first and only child.
As a single mum and her only daughter, we built a special relationship that’s hard to put into words. We had been through a lot together and by the time I moved out of home in my early twenties, we would face-time each other multiple times a day to talk about nothing. I will forever be grateful for the relationship we had and the time I spent caring for her.
In her 68 years, mum had lived a thousand lives. And thanks to her sentimentality, she had documented it all. She had kept all of the cards she had ever been given, including cards celebrating the birth of her daughter ‘Elsie’ who I can only assume I ate in the womb. She had suitcases of photos and letters from her 2 years in Europe, 38 years’ worth of handmade teaching materials and an archive of the Northern Beaches Greens and the many community groups she was involved in.
It was such a treasure to go through her mementos and realise what a fantastically full life she had lived and all the things she had done for me without me even realising. She took me to music lessons, dance, netball, band and nippers. She was on the band committee and a manager of my netball team. While I was in high school, she became the P&C President at Barrenjoey and won a grant to build a community art shed where she taught art lessons for local kids. Everything mum did was about bringing people together to build communities.
Age was always just a number to mum, with her friend ranging from 40 years her junior to 40 years her senior. She was curious about people and it’s what made her a great teacher. Whenever she had a challenging student in class, she made it her mission to befriend them and understand what made them behave that way. Her trick was to ask questions – people love talking about themselves she used to say. But I think people loved talking to mum too.
Her diagnosis came as a huge shock. After 38 years as a high school art teacher, mum was making the most of her retirement. She was at nearly every left-wing protest, with a hat and a backpack and her comfiest shoes. She would spend hours in her garden, oblivious to time and often forgetting to eat. In the middle of some crisis, I would be alternating unanswered calls between her mobile and the land line while she chatted to the kookaburras she thought protected her from snakes in the suburban bush she had created.
To have it all taken away from her was devastating. But mum still managed to find gratitude in her illness. Her illness made her realise how loved she is and reconnected her with family and old friends. Thank you to everyone who visited, called, cooked food, sent flowers and messages – it meant a lot.
I want to acknowledge three people who made it possible for mum to spend the last years of her life at home. Her partner Scott, who was there for it all and would have done anything for mum. Her friend, PA and advocate Amanda Moysie who took a huge load off my shoulders handling all the paperwork and accounting. And finally, my partner David who didn’t hesitate when I told him I wanted to move home to care for mum. There is no greater act of love, and it gave mum great comfort to know you.
I will miss her forever.
Cindy Pitt's speech for Pru at her Celebration of Life
More than 60 years of friendship ………lives intertwined.
We have always been friends she born April 4th 1956 and me April 6th 1957. Pru has always made me and all of us laugh. Her sense of naughtiness her irreverence her confident bold independent nature sustained our long friendship. I adored her and as her end drew closer telling her how I loved her was how we would end each visit.
We went to Newport Primary school together.
Sometimes we would get a lift with my mum singing Beatle songs on the way to school. Or we would walk up Barrenjoey Road past the house that Pru deemed ‘enchanted’ to me her gullible friend and she would point and say ‘look did you see him?’ Me completely sucked in turning my head left and right, searching for the mystical ‘Pixie Brown’.
Weeks would go by me searching her pointing and then one day Pru mumbled out of the side of her mouth ‘Hello Cindy how are you this fine morning’?
Pixie Brown had finally spoken!!
I still remember how amazed I was how I believed her completely. When we grew up she would laugh telling me how she would delight in throwing her voice and me the ever trusting idiot friend would even ask her questions about Pixie Brown such was the power of her imagination painting this picture that was so believable …..to me. I then of course played the same Pixie Brown caper on my younger sister Narelle.
We played Circus Girls on the play equipment in our old house in Foamcrest Ave. I was 6 she was 7. We would play bags it. Prue baggsed being the most beautiful; I
was the second most beautiful. Vicki Miles was the third most beautiful, and Narelle, the baby a distant fourth.
We lived opposite each other on two different hills. She on Hillside and me on Attunga. And behind our houses was bush. Patsy would send us out to play armed with a paper bag with a couple of shredded wheat biscuits, sultanas and an apple. We would be away all-day, Pru leading the play explaining that bees actually lived in Banksia nuts and we would pick the flowers down to the brown furry stem and rub them on our faces as they were so soft. When we were a little older we found some
abandoned cars with a soft canopy of Wandering Dew.
In there we would experiment with smoking and even found some Playboy magazines which after careful examination we both decided were disgusting.
We went to Barrenjoey High School together, she always a year above leading the way. Her friends were my friends and I was an honorary junior member of the
‘’Bubbler Gang” with the girls and Danny Arthur that hung together near the bubblers. Pru was smart at school, an avid reader and loved studying art; she particularly loved art history and the stories behind the artworks and was a fantastic painter.
Later when she taught Art she would make amazing teaching resources to support her students. In those days it was all done by hand. These teaching resources were artworks in themselves.
We caught the school bus together and at the end of each day we would talk for ages at the corner of Neptune laughing so much that one of us, usually me, would wet her pants. And when she decided on a career in education, Pru as an art teacher, well I of course, would be a teacher too. Pru loved teaching - she had a
real way of dealing with adolescence. She didn’t take crap but she showed them how much she cared about what they were doing. When major works were down to the wire, she and her fellow art teachers would be pulling magic out of some kids' work when they had given up long ago.
When Pru and I moved out of home for the first time, we moved together with our boyfriends, she with Kim and me with Nick, to the most beautiful stone house facing north to Palm Beach Lighthouse……. Not too bad at all for your first digs!!
I followed her move to leave the familiarity of the beaches for the city, me eventually ending up in Bondi in a share house with Ian Spence. OMG the day Ian opened the door to my beautiful, exotic and feisty friend Pru Wawn he was Garry Gonna !!
I have never seen anyone get knocked out, bowled over by another human as much as Ian Spence was by Pru.
If she was ringing me, he would intercept the call and speak to her for ages ……. Get off the phone she is my friend!
Little did we know that is would be a life changing meeting for them both because as a result, a beautiful little Ruby would come into this world, a child with the cutest voice I have ever heard, so so cute and so very much loved.
So of course, if Pru could be a mother, then of course I could too, and two years later my Gillian was born.
When Pru moved back to the beaches with Ruby, I of course moved back too. And so we were mothers together. We did birthdays and picnics, dinner parties, lots and lots of parties. We celebrated our birthdays together, being just two days apart. I don’t think we ever had a cross word. I basically agreed with everything she said. It was better that way.
All of us here today know just how important being a political advocate was to Pru. She put her soul and her big passionate exuberant generous heart into trying to save this beautiful blue planet. She worked tirelessly for the Greens and other environmental groups. Her posters her protests …… God she loved a protest. What about when she dressed up as Nurse Ratchet trying to save Mona Vale hospital: classic.
Pru at front in nurses garb and red cloak at a 2018 Save Mona Vale Hospital demonstration
She even put herself forward to run in the seat of Mackellar as the Greens candidate. This was big. This put her right out of her comfort zone. She had to do stump speeches and answer questions on Greens' policy and she knew her stuff. She amazed me and herself I think on what she was able to achieve. I know that her relationship with Scott (Graham) was really important her. Scott really helped generate her self confidence in enabling her to be a forthright warrior for the environment. And Scott, it must be said, was there for Pru right until the end, loving and caring for her. Our hearts go out to you Scott for your loss.
Of course, many of us helped Prue run for Mackellar whether it was leaflet dropping or being abused at a polling station handing out for the Greens, we were at her side.
One of the most important and profound things that Pru did that she spoke of often was when, during the height of the last drought, she travelled to the Baaka River to bring food and water to the communities out near Walgett, Burke, Wilcannia with Bruce Shillingsworth and a group of likeminded city environmentalists.
What she saw affected her deeply. She and this group of city people saw country that was in crisis. And the once mighty Barka was in real trouble. The river being over darined for irrigation (on farms) leaving communities of Aboriginal people that depended on this water left with little. Generous Aboriginal people presented Corroborees where they would do a singing at each of the show grounds in these towns ... The whole trip had a lasting affect on Pru. On her return she collected bikes and skateboards to be taken out for the kids to play with (as part of a Greens campaign).
Through all the great joys in our lives, but particularly when our lives were rough, we were there together. I just happened to ring her minutes after Patsy, her much loved Mum, died in Mona Vale hospital. I was the first person she told ... lives intertwined.
We were together with Belinda and Amanda when she told us she was having tests for some weird symptoms she was experiencing. We reassured her that day that there was nothing to worry about……. But I saw real concern and deep fear in her eyes that day …. And thus she marched head long into what would be an epic endurance test.
And our friend, our beautiful, brave, strong, open, independent Prudie met that test with graciousness and generosity, not to mention her unending good humour.
I never visited her when at some point we wouldn’t laugh. Normally she would be laughing at me at some particularly stupid thing I had done or said. She particularly loved it when I mangled words up…. She loved that!
And on that very last Tuesday that I visited her, at her insistence she made me tell this ridiculous old story of mine to Ruby about my first excursion as a 21-year-old
teacher, where one of my 8-year-old students threw a can at an Emu and the Emu died …… yikes. Which always made her laugh so bad and yet so funny.
Oh, Prudie my oldest dearest friend it's hard to imagine you and I will no longer be growing older together like we had imagined.
I will miss you forever. I love you so much. Run free my darling.
PS: When you vote next think about Pru and put the Environment Number 1 Let that be her legacy.
Peace.