‘Please lean in with a bit of empathy’: it’s not easy being trans in rural Australia

Trans woman and chair of Transcend Australia Dr Rachel Richardson. ‘It’s harder for children outside the city sometimes to declare that they’re trans. The country can be a little bit more conservative.’ Photograph: Abigail Varney/The Guardian

Dr Rachel Richardson speaks with the kind of gravitas you’d expect from a lifetime working in education, yet she maintains an eloquent outrage about the shortfall in services for trans, gender-diverse and non-binary (TGDNB) people in rural Australia.

A trans woman who grew up in country New South Wales and has lived in rural Victoria for nearly three decades, Richardson is chair of Transcend Australia, a charity that has been providing advocacy to families of young TGDNB people for 10 years.