When Lisa Quast’s father, Helmut, arrived in Australia he had absolutely nothing.
Helmut’s family had a warmblood stud in Germany and he was selected in the German Olympic equestrian team, but he came to Australia instead.
When he arrived he cut cane in Murwillimbah. Later, together with his wife Carla, he opened a strawberry farm in Cleveland.
The couple had four children, Peter, John, Lisa and David.
When Lisa was eight months old the family relocated to farmland near Beaudesert.
Lisa and her brothers helped their parents on the small crops farm.
“We all had little roles, whether we were throwing cabbages, cauliflowers or something and one would be a packer. Then we would take it to the Rocklea markets,” she said.
Lisa has been part of Beaudesert & District Tennis Club for most of her life.
Her mother, Carla, was a keen player and young Lisa joined the Club when she was eight years of age.
“I started getting some lessons with Tom Ferguson, he was the founder of the tennis club.”
She started playing tournaments at 14 years and as a 17 year old she was second in the State Ladies Open Tennis.
She hoped to become a professional tennis player, but a knee injury in her last year of high school crushed this dream.
The injury requires ongoing management.
In her thirties a doctor told Lisa she should stop playing sport and go and get a desk job, so she joined the Beaudesert Soccer Club and began training in the gym to strengthen muscles to support her knee.
She had been coaching tennis since she was 17, and although she had been accepted into a Visual Arts degree at university she chose to defer her study to concentrate on coaching.
Lisa met her partner, Karen, playing squash at the courts in Beaudesert when she was 23.
The couple have been together ever since.
In 2019, they were on holiday in Paris when Karen proposed.
“We were on top of the Eiffel Tower,” said Lisa, smiling.
Lisa went to university in 2004 to study primary school teaching. She still loved her sport and in 2017 began working as a PE teacher, doing a circuit of some the smaller schools in the region.
Today she teaches at Gleneagle, Tamrookum, Veresdale Scrub and Darlington State Schools.
She enjoys sharing her love of sport with the students.
“I want to get kids, especially girls, motivated about sport. Some of them don’t realise the benefits but it is changing.”
“You can see the role models coming through now, people like Ash Barty who is not only an Australian woman but indigenous as well.”
Today Lisa and Karen live on the riverside property she grew up on, next door to her youngest brother David.
She still enjoys art, maintaining her three acre property with Karen and spending time with her step-children and grandchildren.
She continues to volunteer with the tennis club and plays several times a week.
