Meet two Pittwater women each making a difference to the world around them as we mark International Women’s Day on 8 March
JESS HILL: DOMESTIC ABUSE ADVOCATE
By Aoife Moynihan
NSW Australian of the Year 2025 finalist Jess Hill, 41, has been writing and educating about violence against women for 10 years. A journalist and author, she’s presented at almost 400 events about coercive control. In 2019, she published her seminal novel, See What You Made Me Do, which won a Stella Award, and was made into a documentary for SBS in 2021.
Growing up in Avalon, Jess was a regular beachgoer but not into surf culture; she’d be in a quiet spot with a book. She now lives in Coogee with husband David and daughter Stevie.
Jess worked in advertising and travel writing before she made her move into journalism. despite not having studied it at university.
“I thought, ‘I’ll just make myself a journalist by doing a road trip across the USA during the Barack Obama campaign,’” says Jess. “I filed every three days for New Matilda.”
This opened the door to the ABC, and Jess went on to work as a radio researcher and producer.
About 10 years ago, when her work covered the Middle East, she was commissioned by The Monthly to write a piece exploring the phenomenon of domestic violence.
“This was at a time when Rosie Batty had just become a powerful advocate in Victoria following the murder of her son, Luke,” recalls Jess. “During my investigations, I found many of my assumptions about why and how violence against women happens were completely wrong, and that was confronting.”
Jess has accumulated many awards for her work
Jess thought if she’d gotten it wrong, others may have too, and this kickstarted her passion for spreading awareness about violence against women.
“I really wanted it to change the way Australia thought about domestic abuse, and particularly introduce the notion of coercive control, “explains Jess. “This was still quite an esoteric term that some lawyers and academics knew about, but it was not publicly understood at all. Psychological abuse was always seen as much less impactful than physical or sexual violence.”
Jess says the personal stories of violence she heard during her research were ‘incredibly harrowing,’ but she found documenting the system’s failures more disturbing.
“Where police didn’t show up or misidentified (a woman who’d just been attacked) as the primary aggressor,” explains Jess. “Or where the family court ordered a child to live with an abusive father.
“It took over my life for three and a half years. I withdrew entirely from social engagements over that time. I was completely and utterly devoted to writing this book and getting it right.”
Her passionate advocacy for reducing violence against women is unstoppable, even though she has been living with brain cancer since 2012. She’s been through surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy and has to have biannual brain scans. Only ‘time will tell’ how she fares. “Unfortunately, with brain cancer, you never go into remission.”
Jess is working on another piece on violence against women for Quarterly Essay for publication in March.
“We’re now onto our second national plan; the first one was to reduce violence; now it’s to end violence within a single generation.”
Jess is investigating areas of focus to get better results in the next 10 to 20 years, one of which is children, where a lot can be done to stop the cycle of intergenerational violence.
“We need to get to the root of why people hold onto really harmful values. And part of that is attending to their childhood.”
SILVIA COLLOCA: COOK, AUTHOR, OPERA SINGER, ACTOR
By Michelle Giglio
When Silvia Colloca arrived in Australia from Italy some 17 years ago, she was mesmerised by Carols in the Domain. A trained opera singer, she thought to herself: “How do I get myself on that stage!” she laughs.
In December last year, Silvia had her golden moment, singing her favourite carol O Holy Night with former Australia’s Got Talent winner Mark Vincent at Carols.
“I remember (walking on stage) saying to myself, ‘Remember, you’ve wanted this very moment in this very place singing this very carol since you’ve come to Australia.’ And I just felt really accepted as a new Australian, and for who I was.”
All those years ago, Silvia had arrived in Australia with nothing after marrying husband Richard Roxburgh – they famously met on the set of dracula epic Van Helsing when Silvia played his on screen vampire bride. “Nobody knew me and I had to start again from zero. Which is not entirely a bad thing because it pushes you in in new directions, and it definitely makes you humble.”
From ‘nothing,’ Silvia has gone on to write seven cook books, star and produce four television cooking shows – Made in Italy (SBS, 2014), Silvia’s Italian Table (ABC, 2016), Cook Like an Italian (SBS, 2020) and Silvia’s Italian Masterclass (10, 2024) – as well as release her first CD, Sing Like an Italian in 2022, which reached number one on the ARIA Classic Album chart. Silvia has certainly found her way.
But Silvia maintains that the ‘highlights of my life, as much as I love my work and every day am thankful that I get to do something that I love, are always the family moments.
“It’s just a time where, as you get older, you appreciate how precious everything is, and how quickly everything goes.”
Silvia’s eldest ‘Raffi’ has just finished school, with Miro 14 and ‘baby’ Luna 7. “We’re kind of hanging on to Luna, knowing how these moments where she still wants to sneak into the big bed with us and having all the cuddles for now, how quickly that changes.”
I remark what a full life she seems to have on Instagram, publishing recipes, singing in concerts and filming her popular cooking shows. “I think everybody’s lives are full. It’s just that some people’s lives are a bit more in the public eye and they just seem busier. I think everyone faces exactly the same juggle. I think (mine) looks a bit more glittery than it is from the outside.”
Despite having published seven cook books, Silvia admits she used to hide them in the cupboard. It wasn’t until a friend told her she should proudly put them on display, that she did. “It really helps on a bad day!” she laughs. “We’re always so good at celebrating the milestones of people that we love, but we’re always shy about being our own cheerleaders.”
Silvia has recently started supporting the Northern Beaches Women’s Shelter, which provides emergency and short-term accommodation for women, focussing on their gala in May.
“What I found really interesting through meeting with them is that the faces of the women that need shelter might look different to the ones that we expect. It may well be your neighbour who has been made redundant and cannot afford her rent anymore. Or someone close to you that’s going through a really difficult divorce, and she’s been left stranded with zero financial support.
“That’s why we need to really always have our eyes out for people that will not speak out, because they might be embarrassed to tell us what’s going on.”