herald sun article, page-2

THE official handbook of the Vodafone Beach Volleyball Tour states: "The official uniform
consists of a singlet and shorts for men and a one or two-piece bathing suit for women".
But when Cathy Norman made her comeback to professional volleyball a couple of years ago, she
was granted a dispensation.
"My partner and I were the only team who were allowed to wear shorts," Norman says.
"I was 39 and she was 35 and we figured no one wanted to see us in bikinis."
Norman, who stands 179cm tall (a touch over 5'10" in the old measure), has played volleyball at a
state and national level on and off for more than two decades.
She defected from state netball as a teenager -- "I think because blokes play volleyball as well," she
quips -- and once captained the West Australian team.
"I even got roped in when I returned to WA at the age of 38 and our team won the national titles."
In fact, it was volleyball that brought Norman back to Melbourne (she was born here) and her
current role as managing director of junior oil explorer Gippsland Offshore Petroleum.
After a decade working in Britain, Norman and husband Peter Hanway (a member of the Irish
national volleyball team) returned to Perth for the birth of their son, Thomas.
They were renovating an old stone house in Fremantle when a friend introduced her to the group
who were considering listing GOP.
"I came back to Melbourne playing beach volleyball one weekend and rang them up, so we met at
the coffee shop downstairs and one hour later I was moving to Melbourne to run the company," she
says.
"We'd just unpacked our last box after finishing the renovations in Perth and we started packing up
again to move here."
Norman is something of a rarity in the Australian oil and gas industry.
While Woodside Petroleum has two women in senior executive positions, Norman is the only
woman in Australia running a listed oil and gas explorer -- and at 41, she is probably one of the
youngest.
Norman studied geophysics at the West Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University) in
Field marshal Norman
Mandi Zonneveldt
December 02, 2006 12:00am Article from: