Bega's Two Sheds carpentry workshops expand into Canberra

Sally Jean Davis, who made her international football debut as a 16-year-old and played professionally for the next decade, took a very different career turn after retiring in 2014.

"Football shaped me for years upon years so it was a big thing to separate from and I struggled quite a lot mentally through that time," Mrs Davis, formerly Shipard, said.

"But then I was living in Sydney and I was living in Avalon with my aunty. I was just like, 'I'd love to get some experience doing something completely random and why don't I do carpentry'?

"So I put word out and then this awesome guy phoned me up and was like, 'Come and work for the next six weeks, you know, I'll give you cash'. At the end of the six weeks, he's like, 'Do you want to do an apprenticeship with me'? And I was like, 'Yeah'."

Carpentry has been a world mostly dominated by men, but Mrs Davis said she was lucky to work with supportive men.

"I've had three distinctive stages in my learning. At the start of my apprenticeship, at the end of my apprenticeship and now I work with a furniture maker - and I honestly think without their guidance and their kind of softness, I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much," she said.

"But I also think coming from football, which is heavily male-dominated in terms of the attention it garners and the pay discrepancies - I feel throughout that career I had it was kind of at the forefront of my mind."

Now Mrs Davis, a former Canberra United player who grew up in Wagga Wagga, has joined Jo Saccomani's Two Sheds Workshops, which runs programs in Bega and Canberra to give more people a feel for making things by hand.

This week, the Canberra workshop started its first LGBTIA+ community evening classes - which are now fully-booked.

The workshop was always looking for volunteers and supplies - and Mrs Davis and Ms Saccomani encouraged people to sign up for classes, even if they weren't sure it was for them.

Ms Saccomani trained as a carpenter more than three decades ago, when the wages accord struck by Prime Minister Bob Hawke opened up more space for women to take trade qualifications.

She said when women and children came into the workshop, their faces lit up as they tapped into a new well of potential.

"And for women it's the potential they've never had access to. They come in here and they're just like little kids in a way, aren't they? They just get so excited they're about to learn something that they've always wanted to learn," Ms Saccomani said.

Mrs Davis said women who came to classes were vocal about their apprehension before they started.

"[They say] how nervous they might feel about a certain thing. And maybe they've never felt safe enough to say that because it would have always been done by their husband or done by their dad. But then they have the opportunity to conquer that fear, which is pretty cool," she said.

Whereas kids, Ms Saccomani said, arrived expecting they could build a rocket if they wanted to.

"For me, that's why I teach them so young: so you can keep that thing, where they can do anything. Girls and boys, I've never seen any sexism in my workshop with younger kids," she said.

"But there's more apprehension when they come in when they're 12, than when they come in at seven. I think that's why I teach them as young as that, so boys and girls know girls and boys can do anything."