There are only a couple more blog posts to come in the Getting To Know Gaia series, and I hope you’re all feeling like you know Gaia a little.

This is a short one. I was discussing childhood with Maya, Gaia’s twin, and she told me that Gaia loved watching documentaries and loved biology at school. She commented that Gaia:

‘wanted to be a midwife, but before that she used to do fashion sketches and wanted to be a fashion designer… she was really creative, and loved science and nature’.

Gaia was very artistic. She drew and painted and was taught to woodburn by her cousin Marienna. She loved it and started covering the furniture in her work.

Clara also recalled Gaia’s love of nature and physical art, but also her singing voice and musical skill. She reflected:

‘Mum was in a band, before we were born, she was an actress and stuff and she always wanted us to be musical. Let’s say opportunities were provided, we weren’t always keen to take them up, but one thing we did do, and all loved to do, was sing with each other.

Maya had a very delicate voice, over years found her voice more. Mine was not very strong but one of the things Mum used to say was I had good pitch. The thing about Gaia was, she had good lungs on her, when she sang she sang.

When Maya learned to play the guitar, we’d sing on the guitar together and most of the time would be great, it would sound great’.

Clara shared how Gaia loved Amy Winehouse and her music:

‘Gaia wanted to be unique, she really respected Amy Winehouse and loved her music. Gaia always managed to get the strength in the sound and in the music, that Maya and I would sing and it would be good, but it wasn’t as strong.

Those lungs and that diaphragm, it came out in singing, she wouldn’t always hit the note perfect, but the strength of sound…

Such strength’.

Clara finishes this recollection by remembering that Gaia’s great lungs weren’t just put to use for singing, but also for laughing:

‘She had great lungs in her laughter as well’.