Long way from Coorain, a treasure nonetheless Jill Ker Conway said she was shaped in Australia by her "relationship with the land and society," and voracious reading. Jill Ker Conway left Australia as a young woman in 1960, married a Canadian and has been a US citizen since 1982, when "the conservative forces in the Republican Party seemed to be increasing in power and I wanted to be able to vote against them." The Australian government refused her dual citizenship under the then tighter rules. However she is one of two people receiving this country's highest honour, being appointed Companion in the general division of the Order of Australia for her "eminent service to the community, particularly women, as an author, academic and through leadership roles with corporations, foundations, universities and philanthropic groups." "It is utterly breathtaking, something I never expected, and I am really touched and proud," said Conway from her Boston home, interrupting a meeting with a homeless organisation she chairs to take a call from Sydney. Conway has inspired Australians with her rise from a childhood on the Western Plains of NSW, stricken by drought and her father's death, to an international career in academia and business. She told her story in the acclaimed memoirs The Road from Coorain, True North and A Woman's Education, among more than 20 books she wrote by rising at 4am. After being rejected for a job with the Foreign Affairs Department, she moved to the US and enrolled at Harvard University, where she received her PhD in history and met John Conway, a Canadian professor who was her husband until his death in 1995. She was the first woman president of Smith College, the oldest and largest US women's college, which she made "post-feminist" and profitable. In 2000 she became the first woman to chair the Australian company Lend Lease, and has served on the boards of Colgate-Palmolive and Nike. Conway said she was shaped in Australia by her "relationship with the land and society," and voracious reading. At 78, Conway is "retired" but gives her time to the John F. Kennedy Library, a Massachusetts land trust, an organisation that helps long-term homeless, and National Public Radio, for which "I put on my hat and coat and go out asking people for money."