Early Life
Wong was born in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia to a Malaysian Chinese Hakka father and an Australian mother. She moved to Australia at the age of eight with her mother and younger brother Toby, after her parents separated. Toby went on to become a chef in Adelaide, South Australia.
Wong gained a scholarship to Scotch College, Adelaide where she studied chemistry, physics and mathematics and was accepted into the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery at the University of Adelaide. After spending a year on exchange in Brazil, Wong found she had an aversion to blood. She then studied and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Jurisprudence and a Bachelor of Laws with Honours at the University of Adelaide and completed a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice at the University of South Australia.
When she was 18, Wong took over the control of the Adelaide University Labor Club. While at university, she worked part-time for the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union. Wong also became involved in political activism at university, winning a position on the National Executive of the National Union of Students. Wong has been a delegate to the South Australian Labor Party State Convention every year since 1989, with the exception of 1995. Her time at university was one where a substantial number of contemporaries became Australian politicians. Former senator Natasha Stott Despoja was a contemporary, along with current Premier of South Australia, Jay Weatherill whom Wong dated while at university.
Read more about this topic: Penny Wong
Famous quotes related to early life:
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)