December 15th, 2025Never too late to follow your dreams

Amanda Care won four medals this year. Three for bowling and one for powerlifting. The 55-year-old, who only recently started both sports as a competitor, says it is never too late to follow your dreams. The Hepburn resident is a real pocket rocket– and despite being born deaf – never let that get in the way of her dreams either. She chatted with Donna Kelly.

Donna: Which came first, the bowls or the power lifting?
Amanda: Lawn bowls. I started about six or seven years ago, just as a social bowler, never took it seriously. Back in Covid, I did go to Scotland for the World Bowls for the Deaf, but there was no selection process, it’s whoever could pay. So I wouldn’t have been selected because I didn’t have the skill set back then. This time around, I went for the Nationals and I practised from 12 weeks before.

Donna: What does that look like?
Amanda: I tried to do 100 bowls per day over six to seven days, if I could, and practised at Creswick because they’ve got the synthetic greens and they were open in winter. And then in Sebastopol with the covered greens when it was really crazy cold, freezing weather. I just did my own thing with my husband guiding me – he’s obsessed with bowls.

Donna: And how did the Nationals play out?
Amanda: The National Australian Deaf Bowls Championships were in Charlestown in New South Wales. I won the fours with four girls on the first day and then on the second day I started going through the selection process of singles. I never expected to win and almost lost on the first one but I managed to climb my way back and got that one. Then I got the next one and the next one and then I won seven games straight. It was the first time in the world it had been televised on YouTube with an Auslan interpreter and captions – so we were making history at the same time. It was pretty exciting and when I won I did a little curtsy and that photo went viral.

Donna: You say you didn’t think you would win…but I hear you did a drawing…
Amanda: Yes, a week before in art class, I am studying Cert 3 in art, we had to do a still-life drawing. So I did the bowls, a kitty and I went to the trophy shop and bought a trophy for the drawing. And just as I was leaving the class I said ‘I’d better write down what I’m winning next week – so I wrote singles winner 2020-25 for the Ladies Championships’. It would have been a bit embarrassing if I had to cross it out and put runner-up.

Donna: You still have one more bowls medal to explain.
Amanda: I had the mixed pairs and I made a mistake of going to the gym and doing a powerlifting session because I couldn’t bowl that day. My muscles were too fired up and too heavy on the bowls and it affects the bowls big time. But then I came runner-up in the triples. And I was selected for the World Championships in Charlestown in two years.

Donna: OK, so how did the power lifting start?
Amanda: I did it to stop my husband nagging me to do weights. He’s always been a weights person. I knew Dean at Strong from Castlemaine and then I realised he was now in Daylesford. Before that it was just my husband and I at home, working out together. But with Dean I have really thrived in that environment. He’s so encouraging and supportive. And I started training for the Australian Masters Games in power lifting. In bowls, we have to take our hearing aids out, and someone suggested to me I do that for powerlifting, and it gave me so much more capacity. With deafness there are two layers. Concentration fatigue and hearing fatigue. It’s call mind gymnastics. Anyway, I entered the 52-kilo weight class and did 90kg for the deadlift – which I won, and a personal best of 75kg for the squat. My PB for the bench is 46. Next year my goal for the deadlift is twice my weight, so 104kg.

Donna: So, I don’t know how to say this, but you obviously weren’t born deaf because you speak so well.
Amanda: Yes, I was born deaf but I was not diagnosed until I was two and a half. Back in the 70s you had to go to the doctor for a referral to an audiologist. But they thought I was intellectually impaired. Back then they called it retarded.
I was dismissed by several doctors, and mum was 22 with another baby on the way. This went on for months and I was nearly three before I got my first hearing aid so I missed out on all that language development.

Donna: What did you do for schooling in those days?
Amanda: We moved to Brisbane where they had a deaf unit, so I went to deaf kindergarten and deaf school and they were doing a revolutionary program to teach all deaf children to speak. It worked for some and not so much for others. Also the other kids would take the hearing aids out because they were the horrible hard plastic. But mum said I wanted to learn. I wanted to know. I wanted to engage. And that helped a lot. And then my sister was two and a half years younger than me. And she was learning to speak at the same time I was. Then mum did something revolutionary at the time – she took me to a hearing kindy two days a week. And the same for first year of deaf school. And then she took me out and decided to have me repeat grade one in mainstream school. And then I didn’t see any deaf people until I was 17.

Donna: Smart mum. What happened at 17?
Amanda: At 17 a visiting teacher of the deaf asked if I wanted to meet other deaf people. And I went to a bush dance and it just felt like I had come home. So I’m definitely in both worlds. In my 20s I was a manager and had to speak to my team every morning. I fumbled my way through and then hearing aid technology improved. I went from analogue to digital. And now its Bluetooth.

Donna: How much can you hear?
Amanda: I’m lip reading because I don’t know your voice yet. And with the hearing aids, I can pick up your voice. But it’s quiet. And there’s a noise of the air conditioning up here. And then I’m always guessing. It’s like a puzzle. The cat sat on the mat. But you might hear cat, mat. Well, what’s the cat doing with the mat? You’re constantly doing this all day long and putting the jigsaw puzzle together.

Donna: Do you have time to work with all of your sports?
Amanda: I’m a professional organiser and declutterer. That’s my playtime. It’s easier when it’s not your own stuff.

Donna: So it’s never too late to start something?
Amanda: Just do it. That’s my message to anyone. It’s not too late to find a new hobby or a new thing. And you don’t have to be the best at it. Have fun with it and just find what that thing is. I also love the social aspect of lawn bowls. You can go to any bowls club in Australia and they have open arms and are curious and interested and happy to have a chat. It’s just a really friendly sport.
Image: Kyle Barnes More online at www.tlnews.com.au