Cyclist, Tupperware champ and Wollongong Lord Mayor - get to know Tania Brown

The following are three truths and a lie about Wollongong’s new Lord Mayor Tania Brown.

She’s a country champion cyclist.

She was a top 10 Tupperware seller.

She was the first woman on the Illawarra Steelers board.

She loves buzzing about town on an e-scooter.

OK, the fib is actually on us – all four are true.

Tania grew up in Unanderra near the velodrome, and she and her three siblings got into cycling from an early age.

They regularly travelled to compete and she brought home some bling – although she said she always preferred the track to road cycling.

“I liked that you could see the finish line,” she laughed.

“I hated riding with traffic, I preferred the velodrome – although my trainer would say, ‘Tania, stop talking to those boys and get back on the track’.

“My brother’s kids got involved and I married a cyclist. It was a fun community.

“After UCI I bought a new bike and I’ve been getting back out again along the Blue Mile.”

She’s also been known to ride an e-scooter home from time to time – after a couple of practice runs in private, Tania became a big fan of the technology.

Growing up, her mum was a legal secretary and her dad a plumber. He and Tania bonded over a shared love of politics, and when she turned 18 they signed up for the Labor Party together.

“Dad, Patrick Heffernan, was in Young Labor with Paul Keating and was president of the young Labor South Coast,” she said.

“So it had always been a political household and Dad and I had that connection. None of my siblings were interested in politics.

“Dad always said the Labor Party was the party of the people and the working class and was there to improve people’s lives. That resonated with me, making a difference.”

Fresh out of school she got a job at David Jones – like many of the girls from St Mary’s did – then at the Commonwealth Bank before stepping away from work to raise her two children.

“When they were four and one I was home with them one day watching soap operas and I thought, ‘There’s more to life than this’, so I enrolled in uni in 1991,” she said.

Free education was a thing of the past, and while Tania’s then-husband was supportive of her higher education she needed a bit of extra money to pay for books and course fees.

Enter Tupperware.

“I drove all my friends mad having Tupperware parties,” she said.

“I was a best seller – they were always having competitions and I was in the top 10 for NSW.

“I still look at things around my home, like a vase or a dinner set, and remember I earnt them selling Tupperware.”

Thanks to a supportive family and plenty of Tupperware parties Tania graduated in 1996.

She didn’t get the opportunity to teach though. A lucky coincidence sent her career on a different trajectory.

“I went to a Labor Party fundraiser and Stephen Martin who was the member for Cunningham had a vacancy in his office, so I started the next week,” she said.

“It was a bit right place, right time. I did start a master’s, but with two children and a full-time job I let that go. It was a shame in hindsight but at the time it was all I could manage.

“I worked for him until 1999 looking after child support, Centrelink, those sorts of areas.

“Helping people get the services they were entitled to, that was really rewarding.

“In 1999 David Campbell, the mayor of Wollongong became member for Keira. His wife asked what I was doing Monday and that’s how I came to work in his office and that was about Department of Housing, health and education.

“That’s how I got to know a lot of people locally because if they wanted to get to the minister they’d come to me. It was an amazing period.”

When the University of Wollongong received funding for the SMART Infrastructure campus in 2008 the uni approached Tania Brown.

She ended up working there for 13 years.

With SMART established and her children grown, Tania had more time on her hands and her interest in politics was piqued again.

She was elected as a Ward 2 councillor in 2017, then as deputy mayor as part of a reshuffle in 2019, and again in 2021.

Tania said going from an office role to being front and centre was a big adjustment.

“It does take a while to find your voice,” she said.

“I was so paranoid that if I said something it would come out wrong, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself or my team.

“Vicky King – who passed away in 2020 – sat next to me and kept encouraging me to say something.

“It was like a switch flicked. I do have opinions and I can share them and it’s not the end of the world if it ends up on the front page.”

It wasn’t all plain sailing once she found her voice, however.

Tania championed the rainbow crossing outside the Novotel in the aftermath of the same-sex marriage vote.

She felt it was an important gesture to show members of the community who had their personal lives in the public eye that they were supported, welcomed and valued.

Some residents didn’t see it that way, and it was one of many occasions when Tania copped mean-spirited public attacks.

During her seven years on council her gender, appearance and family have all come under fire, and at times she’s had to clap back.

But she said the experience had honed her resilience.

“Resilience isn’t something you can think your way into, you have to get there by experience,” she said.

“It’s such a shame. I know we’ve lost proactive, hardworking and smart councillors because they’ve had to protect their kids from it.

“When I speak to young women and girls about leadership I’ve had to tell them you can make a difference, but you have to be prepared to have a thick skin.”

She intends to use that resilience to lead the new council, which will feature eight new faces, tackle housing affordability and find more money in the budget for footpaths and flooding.

“Housing affordability is a big task but I want to try,” she said.

“Every councillor will bring their own passion projects to the table so that will be interesting to see what the highlights are for everyone.

“I’ve just been reading on Tarrawanna Facebook page that someone wants to lobby the council for a half-court basketball and I’m really excited to see that, we want the community to come to us with their ideas.”