Family is everything

The COVID-19 pandemic has given many people an opportunity to pause and reflect on what’s most important. And for UQ Adjunct Professor of Public Health Sandra Creamer AM, that has always been family.

On 28 July, Sandra became a lawyer, and it was her own son, barrister Joshua Creamer, who moved her admission to the Queensland Supreme Court.

“He has walked this journey with me – giving me a big shout out, ‘you can do this’,” Adjunct Professor Creamer said.

The mother-of-four made history that day as the first Queenslander to be admitted by her son.

But, the real success story isn’t becoming a lawyer. In fact, she completed her studies eight years ago, and has been busy travelling the world championing Indigenous rights since then without the time for legal formalities.

That just about sums up Adjunct Professor Creamer. She wants people to have more than she’s had.

A Waanyi/Kalkadoon woman from Mount Isa, Sandra was raised by her father and 11 older siblings after losing her mother when she was just a baby. She learned to read from her eldest sisters who did not have the opportunity to go to high school.

“We grew up reading a lot, it was really encouraged. Knowing how little education my sisters received made me determined to appreciate mine,” she said.

As a single parent who only got to grade nine herself, it wasn’t easy to provide her four children with a quality education, but she managed to send them all to private school, while working and studying a law degree herself.

“Education is really important to me, no matter how hard it is. My children all had to work while they were at high school to help pay the school fees,” she said.

“There have been plenty of moments when I didn’t know what to do; moments when I wanted to pack it all in because the power went off or the car wouldn’t start.”

“We never had a lot of things growing up; we didn’t have hot water in the house,” she said.

“But my family instilled this really strong belief in right and wrong, and that sense of commitment to Indigenous communities.”

Working at Legal Aid Queensland with victims of crime, Sandra developed a passion for helping vulnerable women and Indigenous people.

“Working there really changed me. I saw that there there were many issues and injustices experienced by poor people."