Part of the celebration, but feeling worlds away

For Nanette Holliday, Christmas Day in Darwin is a jubilant affair. There’s “lots of prawns, lots of seafood, champagne and oysters” – and a lot of parties.

Holliday is a dedicated social butterfly, who crams as many engagements as she can into the silly season. But hearing loss in her left ear does mean it can be difficult to keep up with the conversation at those loud, busy celebrations. “The hardest part is when you’re walking around at a function, you do miss a lot of juicy gossip,” the 72-year-old laughs.

When she’s on her feet working the room, background noise and competing conversations can make it hard to hear everything being said. Sit-down events are easier, as Holliday will tell whomever she’s seated next to on her left side that she is partly deaf, and encourage them to give her a good tap on the shoulder when they want her attention. In the decade of life she’s in, Holliday is rarely the only one in her social circle wrestling with their hearing.

“You’d be surprised how many other people now say, ‘Oh, I’ve got hearing loss in that ear too’. They haven’t had accidents like I’ve had but have developed hearing loss over time.”

Holliday’s own journey with hearing loss began earlier than most. At age 32, she burst an eardrum during a water-skiing accident. It led to an 18-month, near-fatal battle with cholesteatoma, a skin growth in the middle ear that eventually eats away at the bone surrounding the brain. Three surgeries later, doctors saved her life, but she never heard out of her left ear again. “It happened, we survived and got on with things,” Holliday shrugs, matter-of-factly.

The cards fate dealt Holliday didn’t dull her natural optimism or stop her from going on to live a fabulous life. A live wire who’s done it all, Holliday has worked as everything from a TV newsreader to a travel writer, launching businesses and raising children along the way. She’s lived in both Melbourne and France but has been based for many years in the vibrant Top End capital, a city she loves. It’s a lovely bonus that she gets to use her proximity to Asia to hop off on frequent overseas explorations.

But hearing loss does mean that social occasions can feel a little like those trips abroad. “I feel like I’m in a foreign country and not speaking the same language, because I can’t respond [in conversation] in the same way as everybody else can,” she says. “Or I say something really stupid in response because I didn’t hear the question properly.”

There was one time way back when she was riding in a car with a “really fantastic guy” her friend met on a plane.

“He was sitting in the front of the car, and her and I were sitting in the back. He asked a question that I didn’t quite hear properly, and I said something [that didn’t make sense] in response. My girlfriend shot me a look like, what are you talking about?” Holliday remembers. Disaster was, luckily, averted: “Somehow he still fancied me after that!”

Now that she’s in her 70s, Holliday has been proactive in looking after the hearing in her right ear.