Meet our National Finalist for Miss Galaxy Australia 2025, Lilee Lunney

Growing up in Queensland, Australia, I have never met a girl or woman who competed in beauty pageants. The extent of my pageant knowledge came from watching Sandra Bullock be totally made over in Miss Congeniality and mothers with strong southern accents tell audiences, “the higher the hair, the closer to God,” when their daughter starred in an episode of TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras.

My female role models as a child were Olympians Sally Pearson and Cathy Freeman, Australian icon Kylie Minogue and former Prime Minister Julia Gillard; while wildly different from the outset, all of these women are equally as hard working and trailblazers in their industries. Is it any wonder I am now pursuing a professional sporting career while studying a Masters of Women’s and Children’s Health and working as a Sports Administration Assistant at one of the biggest schools for girls in the world?

When an advertisement for Australian Galaxy Pageants appeared on my Instagram explore page in September 2024, I was curious as to what a pageant actually involved. Admittedly I had some strong preconceived ideas of what a ‘pageant girl’ would look and act like, so was shocked to find women who looked both just like me (imagine short, curly hair, brown eyes, athletic build) and wildly different across the Australian Galaxy Pageants page. The organisation’s website promoted inclusivity and advertised the pageant as an opportunity to empower women to be confident in themselves.

I thought to myself, “why not?” and submitted an application online, never expecting anything to come from it. 

Almost six months later, I am a National Finalist for the title of Miss Galaxy Australia - in early May, I will compete against 20 other women between 19 and 27 years of age at the National Final in Sydney. I guess you could say that I am a pageant girl now.

Outside of pageantry, my standard day starts before 5.00am when my alarm goes off to head to rowing training at Sydney Rowing Club. At the moment, my team is training for the national championships which will be held in five weeks time and the 2025 Australian Rowing Team national selection trials; if successful at the trials, I would have the opportunity to represent Australia at the world championships later this year.

Over a decade ago, I joined my school rowing program at a Brisbane Schoolgirl Rowing Association member school and haven’t looked back since - the camaraderie and celebration of women’s strength in rowing is like nothing else, and it is many of the women I know through rowing who have inspired me to set high goals and stop at nothing until I achieve them. 

The high performance rowing club I was a member at in Brisbane for many years has a group of Masters women who row in a squad together simply because they love rowing with their best friends. Little do many outsiders know, these women are former Australian Rowing Team members who have raced at, and won, many world championships over the past thirty years. It is women like this group (who have named themselves my ‘rowing mums’) that have shown me I am capable of whatever I put my mind to and encouraged me to pursue rowing and other interests, including the Australian Galaxy Pageant.

My grandma is another female in my life who has been one of my biggest cheerleaders and most important role models. I feel so lucky to be told I remind family and friends of her, both in looks and personality; at one point in her life, my grandmother was a single mother with four primary school aged kids. Before that, she was a 14 year old who had to leave school to help support her parents and siblings. In my lifetime, she was an artist, a politician and attained a vocational qualification.

When I finish training each morning, I drive to the North Shore of Sydney where I start my day job as the Sports Administration Assistant at an all girls school (not dissimilar to the one I attended in Brisbane where I was introduced to rowing). I love sport - why else would I voluntarily set an alarm for 4.40am every morning?! A recent study by the Women’s Sport Foundation highlighted how participation in sport is proven to have a huge positive impact on young girls’ and womens’ life-long outcomes; more than two-thirds of women who have formal leadership roles in a workplace played sport as a young girl. This research was released in a report called Play to Lead and can be found here if you are interested in learning more. This is attributed to not necessarily physical health related outcomes from playing sport, rather the resilience and leadership skills built through teamwork, problem solving, and hard work. Employability in a leadership position increases an individual’s earning capacity, and greater financial means enables people to access other resources like medical assistance, nutritious foods and education that further supports good health and improved quality of life.

For these reasons, I feel a significant responsibility in my job - I have an opportunity to enable more than 2500 young girls to participate in sport programs every day at school, which has the potential to change their life for the better!

Financially empowered women live healthier lives and have more opportunities to achieve their dreams. Where sport has given me financially empowering life skills to support my future, Paylab helps me make the most of my money today.

The cash-back feature of the Paylab app means I earn rewards when filling up my car with fuel from Shell as I hit the road each weekend to drive to a rowing competition or at Rebel Sport when I have worn through my favourite running shoes at training and need a new pair. Necessary everyday spending has become an occasion where I can work towards achieving my athletic goals and be the best version of myself, all while being financially rewarded in the Paylab app. As my official sponsor as a delegate of the Australian Galaxy Pageant organisation, Paylab is also partnered with brands where I have found wardrobe pieces for the national final; I found the perfect pair of earrings to match my evening gown on The Iconic and, as one of Paylab’s partnered brands, I could earn cash-back when purchasing them using the rewards I earnt in previous purchases (like fuel at Shell). In what could be considered a case of girl math, I could justify the special occasion purchase at a great price with Paylab’s help.

Another factor that drew me to the Australian Galaxy Pageant system is the organisation’s partnership with batyr Australia. batyr is a charity aiming to improve mental health of young people by preventing the onset of mental ill-health through opening the conversation and breaking down the stigma of the issue. I am very open about the struggles I have had with anxiety and depression throughout my childhood, adolescence and now adult life. The work batyr does in researching mental health interventions and strategies to best support young people and spreading word of support resources are actions I see so much value in and have accessed in times where I have found myself in a really dark place. 

If you would like to contribute to batyr’s work in the mental health space, I have a fundraising page set up with the organisation that can be found here. Any and all support of this cause is life changing and so appreciated.

While it is not always easy to do so, speaking up about mental health, chasing a career in sport and being an advocate for girls and women are all areas I continue to act upon every day. These are topics that are linked to one another and have the potential to change a young girl or woman’s life both today and in the future. I have four younger sisters who massively contribute to my passion and work ethic; almost every day I spend time questioning if the choices I am making will demonstrate to my sisters that they can achieve anything they aspire to in life regardless of their gender and, more importantly, make their journey to achieving their goals easier than mine has been.

Tracing my ancestry on my mum’s side, I am the first female to finish high school. Now I am so proud to say I will be the first female in my family with a postgraduate degree when I graduate from my Masters later this year. I am also the first person in my dad’s family to have been born in Australia, after he immigrated with his parents from China as a child. 

The journey I have taken as a high performance athlete, student, sister and sports administrator is not always easy but it is rewarding. It brings me so much joy to see the students at my work having fun at their sport training sessions and games every day, which tells me that the hard work I have put in is totally worth it. 

This International Women’s Day, I am celebrating these young girls for the bright futures they have ahead of them, my own female role models for the path they carved for me and, for the first time, myself for the opportunity I have in supporting the next generation of female leaders.