Grace Tame: ‘I’ve had such a strange life, really’

There is barely a wrinkle on the surface of Frederick Henry Bay as Grace Tame stands still, slides her blue eyes right and reboots the side-eye that launched a thousand memes.

Tame's snub of prime minister Scott Morrison – deployed at a photocall marking the end of her tenure in 2022 – is an image that came to outlast many from an entire year of official duties as 2021 Australian of the Year, and sent some into a tailspin.

"That's the one that took down the government – sort of," the 29-year-old child sexual abuse survivor and advocate says before we rejoin the Roches beach track, having wandered our way along the coast towards Seven Mile beach on nipaluna/Hobart's easternmost fringe. Various things ended the Morrison government, of course, but its relationship with women was one of them. "I mean everyone was ready for that, everybody was done with him."

That encounter, and the commentary it sparked, was a good example of how moments are so often taken out of context and repackaged to suit others. It's a lesson she learned at the age of 16 during the first court case of her rapist, school teacher Nicolaas Bester. In news coverage, she was painted as the aggressor and the abuse romanticised. The Murdoch press's coverage in 2011 still sickens her. "Nothing has even come close to what that was like. That was horrific," she says.

There's a jarring disconnect between the past we are talking about and the grass-lined, gum-dappled coastal path on this bright August morning. Tame has been up since 4.30am, has done Bikram yoga and had a run. She's wearing a jumper emblazoned with the art of Martin Sharp: "This is a symposium on beauty" it reads across the back. A tattoo on her hand saying "Eat my fear" is taken from a David Lynch sculpture deemed so grotesque it did not make it to public viewing. Along with the infinite calm of the setting, the combined effect is one of soaring loveliness coexisting with the fact that some things are hard to stomach.

Here, she is enveloped in her home habitat, around the corner from her father's place and a stone's throw from her grandparents'. She runs this path at least once a month, chasing active meditation as a foil to her role as CEO of the Grace Tame Foundation, working to improve child abuse prevention and responses.

"The work that I do goes in peaks and troughs. Some weeks I might receive a deluge of disclosures or there might be a particular incident that I'm processing," she says of the need to move her body and be close to the ocean.

There's a "weird paradox" between living in the public eye and within "her own little bubble", sometimes oblivious to and often amused by the distortions of fame.

On one hand, she has helped elevate conversations around child sexual abuse, dismantle shame and connect communities. On the other, her award brought with it a tumultuous three years that put as much strain on herself as it did on her family and loved ones. Abuse was amplified, with trolls finding "every crevice that they could creep through", she says. Along the way, she was conflated with other advocates with whom she had little in common. "It's been quite difficult to negotiate some of the consequences of the multidirectional pressure that came as a result of that award," she says. Grounding connections – with friends, with the bushland under her feet – are important, particularly as she lives with autism.

"Most people are in the spotlight deliberately ... it's more strategic and they have more supports in place to protect them. I was sort of just thrust on to this platform out of obscurity and ... into a really fraught space in a really fraught dialogue."

She'll soon be back on stage – this time one of her own choosing – when she appears in her forthcoming speaking tour, exploring how she survived that spotlight. A hefty part of her armoury was laughter, something that has been cast as at odds with the experience of victim-survivors. "For a long time, victim-survivorship was seen as a one-note experience that defined an individual, which is bullshit in my opinion," she says.

And while it may be true that the best humour is not about making fun of others, she "will probably be making a few laughs at the expense of Mr Bester because he is a bit of a comedy piñata". In one of her jokes, she describes him as having the child sexual offender starter pack: "He wears New Balance 1080s, he's a Catholic schoolteacher, he plays the fucking organ. All he needs is a Mr Whippy van and he's got the full set."

On the tour, she'll be wrangled by a host each evening and, while she is both disarmingly honest and understandably guarded, she's performed standup before, debuting with A Rational Fear live in Melbourne in 2022. Her entire five-minute set at the same show last year was aimed at defaming Rupert Murdoch. (Her other bete noir, Morrison, remains "in the bin". At any rate, she says she is an anarchist and has little time for politicians, no matter their stripes.)

"It's just [about] having a good time," she says of the show. Many people in the audience will be autistic, she says, and she hopes they feel safe and "free to be themselves". Still, she is aware that everything she does can become news, somehow: her hair, her muscles, speaking out, not smiling. "You cede power to whoever consumes that content. But the people who are on your side, they understand you and your intentions," she says. "And you've got to trust that process."

We walk past what real estate agents call a substantial property with commanding views, its lawn stretched towards the tiny cove of Peaches beach. Occasionally, when running, she'll climb down for a swim, and her mother (who is also her neighbour and landlord) swims in the ocean every day, calling it her natural shock therapy.

Tame's knuckles are inkily etched with her grandparents' surnames: Tame and Free. Those hands do their own drafting, often in biro, usually hyperreal and swirling with icons from the many lives that have so far fitted into her years. For Tame has survived low lows, made even more extraordinary by their timing. Nine months before receiving the Australian of the Year award, she was living in Los Angeles, where life "was rough as guts". She had been addicted to drugs, lived out of her car, worked for minimum wage. And, "Jesus fucking Christ, I was married." She started running again, got sober and became celibate. She was so anorexic that she was unable to think clearly, going to bed at 6pm each evening. "I was almost chasing this pre-abuse state. I looked at a picture of myself recently from that time ... I was a rake. It was so sad. So much trauma."

Back on our stage, a pademelon lollops past, then another. Tame is 12 weeks post endometriosis surgery. Within six weeks – "typical me", she says – she was back running 80km a week, leaving her with tendonitis. A couple of years ago, she fractured her pelvis and foot by running too much. This week is a 68km week – she's preparing to defend her Bruny Island ultramarathon title in late November, recently completed the Great Ocean Road ultra and in February will run the Kilimanjaro marathon. Forcing her to rest takes a straightjacket, she admits.

Long-term thinking plays no part in her neurodivergent outlook – but she has stuck to the plan to step back from her CEO role and is about to select a new chief executive from 91 applicants. It'll leave her with more time for advocacy, sketching, travelling. There're still mistakes to be made and lessons to learn, she says.

"I am one of those 'I'll do anything' sorts of people. I've had such a strange life, really," she says, before applying a running lesson to the unpredictabilities that she knows lie ahead.

"If you resist the forces outside of your control, they only hurt more," she says. "You just have to accept that there's nothing to master, you are one with the elements. They are part of you, you are part of them, and that's how you get through it. That's life. Nama-fuckin'-ste, bitches."