Breaking Bread: Sister Diana Santleben opens up about her passion to help those in need

That’s the thing about Sister Di. Even when she’s being taken out to lunch, she’s thinking how she can convert that into helping others, particularly refugees and asylum seekers.

As she says later, presumably with no intended reference to her present dining partner, “I’d sit down with the devil, if it was going to help the refugees.”

Read more: Incredible stories from Newcastle and the Hunter

Sister Di’s advocacy for refugees and asylum seekers, particularly women, led to her being named Newcastle’s Citizen of the Year. When she attended the City Hall ceremony in January, Sister Di didn’t know she had won the honour, but, just in case, “I wore my best clothes, so I wouldn’t be embarrassed by having dungarees on or something”.

Sister Di is comfortable in dungarees. She loves gardening. That was a prime reason she moved to Newcastle from Sydney in 2005. When she and another nun from the Dominican order headed up the freeway, Sister Di said they “looked like the Beverly Hillbillies”, towing a trailer with a chook pen.  

Sister Di bought a house in Maryland for the order, renamed it the Gaia Dominican Sisters’ convent and, with the aid of government grants, installed water tanks and solar panels, tore up the lawn, and created permaculture gardens, creating an eco house.

“I actually believe in the fact that we must live very lightly,” she says, as she eats her salad.

“If you want to see ‘eco people’, go to the Philippines, go to Indonesia, or the Solomons, where people have to live very lightly on the land because they don’t have a choice.”

After a year or so and having established the garden, Sister Di recalls, “I wondered what was happening with the refugees, so I contacted Sister Betty Brown [who ran the local refugee support service Penola House] and said, ‘I’ve got a trailer, can you use me?’ And that’s how I began.”

Actually, Sister Di’s drive to help others began long before that.

DIANA Santleben was born in 1948, the second eldest of five children, and grew up in the inner western Sydney suburb of Strathfield.

Her father was a Second World War veteran and toolmaker who loved learning and improvising.

When television was introduced to Australia, he didn’t buy a set, he made one. Her mum was an “archetypal little Irish mother”, so “half leprechaun and half German thinker is what I am”, she exclaims, as she takes up my offer to grab a piece of salt and pepper squid off my plate.

“Yeah, give us a taste!”

Read more: Sister Di is named 2017’s Newcastle Citizen of the Year

The Santlebens poured their earnings into their children’s education. Young Diana went to a school run by the Dominican nuns, Santa Sabina. She was so inspired by them Di decided she too would join the order. But first Di experienced a little of life between school and the convent. She worked as a teacher’s aide.

“It was the most brilliant thing that ever happened to me,” she recalls. “Two years I was a teacher’s aide, no responsibilities, got money, went out with boys, had a fantastic social life, and I then entered the convent in 1967. So fifty years this year.

“The day I entered the convent, there were 19 of us. I’m the only one left in the convent. The rest left and two have died.  

“Why I became a sister is I wanted to be like the sisters. I wanted to be like them. I was really impressed by them. I wanted to be a really good teacher. People said I was a born teacher. I loved ideas.

“We all have to make decisions about commitment and relationships and all that sort of stuff, no matter who we are.”  

When it comes to social justice and education, Sister Di is not just an observer. She travelled overseas as a representative for the organisation Action for World Development, she taught in schools, including at Corpus Christi, Waratah, and worked with the deaf as an advocate.

She befriended refugees for the first time while studying in Melbourne in 1980, when she met a group of East Timorese women. Since then, she has made many friends, and improved many lives in ways both seemingly small and monumental. In Newcastle’s refugee community, she is revered and adored. I’ve seen shy young blokes hug her as though she is their mother. They know Sister Di cares about them like their own mothers would.

“Why do I care about refugees?,” she says. “I care about the fact that this stupidity, this cynical [government] stupidity, has made it a problem. I don’t care about refugees really, I care about one family at a time, I care about one person at a time.

“It’s not about refugees, it’s about basic justice and humanity, it’s the same thing anyone should fight about, we should all be outraged.”

I ask her why she reckons more don’t care, and why many are angry that asylum seekers are even here.

“Because we have a very poor political awareness in some ways,” she replies. “We are very easily swayed by terrible arguments. I stand every Thursday afternoon with the grandmothers against the detention of refugee children in front of [Federal MP] Sharon Claydon’s office. People are driving past and doing that [she sticks up a finger]. Most people drive past and toot and say ‘good on ya’, but I’ve had somebody go, ‘Donald Trump, yeah!’.

“There is permission when you’ve got people like Abbott and Turnbull and Shorten and all of them denigrating each other. The problem is lack of moral leadership.”

Last year, Sister Di established Zara’s House, a centre in Jesmond where refugee women can meet, make friends and share skills. Now she wants to establish a school, particularly for several dozen Afghan women.

She has done a survey among recent arrivals from Afghanistan and estimates 80 per cent of the women can’t even read or write their own name. She is hopeful of having the school operating by late this year.

“You’ve got no idea of the look on these girls’ faces when you start talking to them about it,” Sister Di smiles. “It’s a dream come true.

“Imagine being girls in Afghanistan. Imagine all your life being just an object. That’s all you are, an object, a girl-thing. You’ve got no brain. All you are is being raised so you can cook and have sex and do as you’re told.

“Why do I do it? I’m outraged. I’m absolutely outraged at the denial of these basic human rights. Why wouldn’t I be upset when I’ve been given what I’ve been given as a girl, or as a human being?”

Sister Di enjoys watching movies. Forrest Gump and The Castle are among her favourites. She loves reading, going to the cricket with her brother - “I’ve got tickets to the Ashes!” - and there’s the gardening. Yet all of that in her own life will continue to take second place to her need and desire to support and enrich other lives.  

“I do it because it’s there,” concludes Sister Di. “I do it because there’s one family after the other. I do it because these families can be served by Betty and me. We are able to make a difference in their lives. When somebody else comes along and says, ‘You don’t need to do this anymore… I’m going to go, fantastic, I’ll go back to my gardening, back to my chooks, and back to my friend [Sister Betty, who lives with Sister Di]. We’re going to say our prayers about the things we care about, but not work as hard as we do.”