The Judy Bailey Interview: Jo's life lessons ‘It's often not the strong who SURVIVE'

The adventurer and author shares stories of her unconventional family life and her death-defying travels.

- JUDY BAILEY

She’s ridden her motorbike through some of the world’s most inhospitable terrain, braving bandits in Kenya, suffering from altitude sickness in Peru and heatstroke in Pakistan, and enduring a perforated ulcer in Russia, where she travelled along Siberia’s treacherous Road of Bones.

She also took up mountaineering as a grandmother, only to be buried by an avalanche that killed her climbing companions, and yet still she remains indefatigable.

Jo Morgan is a formidable woman. A woman for our times. Spirited, brave, determined and independent. Her new book, Dancing with the Machine: Adventures of a Rebel, is quite some read.

Jo is the youngest of eight children born to Reg and Mary Baird. Reg, a stock and station agent, died when she was just one. Her eldest sibling was 17. Jo jokes that she would have been a middle child had her dad not died.

Mary would go on to raise her family on her own on a widow’s pension. “We were financially stretched, but she put a smile on her face and made ends meet,” recalls Jo, adding that church and family would help out.

The clan lived opposite Queens Park in Invercargill, where there were lots of trees to climb. “It was a great playground. Mum wasn’t worried about where we were and there were few rules, but we knew what was expected of us.”

Mary was a devout Catholic, her family the centre of her universe. Three of her four sisters lived nearby and most of the socialising Jo did in those early years was with family.

“Mum was always giving. On Sundays, she would pick up Catholic boys from the local borstal and take them to Mass, then bring them home for breakfast.”