On a quiet West Albury street, tucked away in a block of units, is the home of a woman passionate about community, career, creating and ... collecting.
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"I've been doing it since I was 11 years old," said Lisa Ride.
"My first collection was blue and white china, but I collect buttons, I collect thimbles, I collect toy sewing machines, I collect dalmatians, I collect pieces of china.
"I collect, well, just about anything really."
Her unit is stacked with cabinets filled neatly, but completely, with ornaments and knick-knacks.
There are piles of antique suitcases, photo albums, shelves of books and a nursery's-worth of succulents line the front outside wall of the house.
It's as full and colourful as her life.
Ms Ride grew up in 1960s Canberra. She joined the Australian Federal Police force in 1981 and a short while later the Army Reserve.
"Back in those days the Army Reserve had the job to train the recruits," she said.
"I would finish a police shift in Canberra, hop in my car, drive to Sydney to Bardia Barracks at Ingleburn, train recruits for two weeks and then come back again.
"That was my whole world."
In 1988, Ms Ride moved to Albury.
She has also been a NSW Corrections Officer, a singer with the St Matthew's Church choir and Border marriage celebrant for a decade.
"And in between I somehow managed to raise five children," she said.
"I'm not sure quite how I did that, but I had a wonderful time."
What I've discovered after time is that my poems have told my story.
In 2006, Ms Ride's whole world changed when she was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.
"It's a neurological condition that's quite debilitating," she said.
"It's slowly taking over; I'll just be immobile.
"[It] takes away your capacity to function.
"[It] takes away from me the things that I love about life.
"I was trained for army, police, corrections and all the things I now can't do.
"The last job I was doing I was second in command of the electronic system wing out at Bandianna.
"I had 175 students and 30 staff and I was second in command of the wing and I was working, you know, 24 hours a day.
"I just couldn't cope with it, my body was just shutting down.
"I had to come clean and say, 'Look, I have Parkinson's' and move on, but it was just absolutely awful."
I had to come clean and say, 'look, I have Parkinson's' and move on, but it was just absolutely awful.
And - hardest of all - her licence has been taken off her.
"It took away from me that joy of work and I'm someone who really loves to work," Ms Ride explained.
"It's quite horrible and I tried for a while to get other work, but you find after a while that the brain's just not the same."
Ms Ride said the disease was a change to, but not the end of, her life.
She had always been interested in poetry, but being forced to quit work freed up her time to invest into her hobby.
"The Parkinson's made me write and I certainly would never have published a book had I not found myself in this situation," she said.
In 2016, Ms Ride published her book, A Little Spot of Poetry, with an online overseas publishing agency, but said she had trouble getting Australian bookshops to sell it.
"At the end of the day I was really just selling to family and friends," she said.
"But what I really want to have, is to get into Sydney airport one day and see that book of mine in the bookshelf when I'm coming down the escalator, then I'll know I've made it."
She described her poetry style as Pam Ayers meets AB Paterson.
"When I was growing up, we had Pam Ayers who was a poet on television," she said.
"And Mum was a fan of AB Paterson, so by the age of five years old, I was doing poetry for Christmas parties.
"It's a little bit of fun and my poems have a little twist at the end to give them a kick."
IN OTHER NEWS:
This year, Ms Ride entered the inaugural Carol Reffold poem competition at The Man From Snowy River Bush Festival.
Entrants have 24 hours to write a poem on a given topic that must be performed in less than one minute.
At this years competition, the theme was 'good enough'.
"It must be entertaining and it must meet the requirements of bush poetry, which is meter and rhyme," said Ms Ride.
The winner is judged through an audience "clap-o-meter".
Ms Ride composed and performed a poem about her Parkinson's, winning the competition.
"I was really humbled to win it this year," she said.
If we don't tell our stories they die with us.
"It was just amazing, especially as Carol Reffold was a friend of mine.
"I find it terribly difficult now to deliver poetry clearly, fluidly and without doing it at a million miles an hour, because, in order for my body to work, my medication makes my brain work very fast," she said.
"So getting up on the stage, of course, with people looking at you, is even worse.
"I find that with my writing I get an idea in my head and sometimes it'll go 'bang' and it's right there.
"But more often than not, it'll be four o'clock in the morning and I'll wake up.
"It'll be one sentence in my head and I go 'oh no', because once it's there I can't stop.
"So I just have to get up and write it.
"I would say 90 per cent of my poems I write in one go."
Though the Parkinson's poem won Ms Ride an award, she said it was not the poem that made her most proud.
Her 2016 poem Remember the Australian Soldier raised awareness about post-traumatic stress disorder and Ms Ride said it was the poem she'd like to be remembered for.
"Post-traumatic stress disorder doesn't just affect those who have been in the war," she said.
"People don't just die in wars, they die after wars.
"It affects those who have been in the system no matter what it is."
She said it was the only poem she had taken seriously:
"We need to stop this terrible toll of people who are taking their own lives that have come back from deployment.
"It's really awful.
The number of people it affects is just horrible.
"In 2020 the Prime Minister made a commission to look into this situation, but what happens? Why do people keep taking their lives?"
Ms Ride said her poetry was a release.
"What I've discovered after time is that my poems have told my story," she said.
"Although I'm no one special, we all have a story to tell.
"If we don't tell our stories they die with us."
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