Shortly thereafter some friends encouraged me to try out for the Miss South Carolina World beauty pageant. To my surprise I won - and was sent to New York City to compete nationally.

In Scotland over many years we have cultivated through our justice system what I hope can be described as a 'culture of compassion.' On the other hand there still exists in many parts of the U.S. if not nationally an attitude towards the concept of justice which can only be described as a 'culture of vengeance.'

I went to England in the '70s and I was in my early 20s. There was still a residue of that era of being an underclass or colonial. I assume it must have been a more aggressive and prominent attitude 40 years before that because Australia internationally wasn't regarded as having much cultural value. We were a country full of sheep and convicts.