Growing up in Leeton she felt she had more freedom in the country than is available to kids growing up in the city.

“You’d go around to a friend’s house and we’d walk in the gutter and dissappear until the sun started to go down and that would be our cue to go,” Mrs Egan said.

“You had a little bit more freedom.”

Having the run of the block was the way she and her friends spent their time and she felt that the strong sense of community offered a safe place to grow up.

As she grew older Mrs Egan set her sights on becoming a marine biologist, but quickly realized the ocean was a long way from Leeton.

That realisation led to a pivotal moment in Mrs Egans life and was the start of a journey that would change her life as well as her perspective of the little country town she grew up in.

She set the goal of going to Japan for a year for a student exchange and would not let anything get in the way.

“It really was a turning point for me,” Mrs Egan said.

“I was 16, but I had made up my mind and that’s what I wanted to do.”

She secured a scholarship to cover the expenses and was off to live in Hiroshima with a host family.

“I went to an all-girls school that had 6500 girls,” she said.

“At the time it was close to the population of Leeton. It was a real shock.”

Fully immersed in a new culture and language, Mrs Egan began to see Leeton in a new light and earlier thoughts of being a marine biologist living in a Melbourne penthouse apartment faded from view.

“Leeton was so vastly different to Hiroshima that it put a whole different perspective on Leeton as a town and a community,” she said.

“It almost feels as though we have everything that a city or a bigger centre would have, but it has that underlying grassroots small community feel about it.”

The small-town feel was one she had come to appreciate and proudly calls Leeton her home.

“I’m very passionate about our community,” she said.

“Leeton really has that sense that we all have each other’s backs. Leeton is what you put into it.”