Canberra's contender in the Miss Universe contest, Veena Wijewickrema, just wants to see some colour in the pageant

APRIL 15 2019 - 12:00AM

Veena Wijewickrema is walking oddly as she races to make our coffee date - something between a strut and a waddle as she makes her way towards the table.

It's hardly the entrance you'd expect from Canberra's very own contestant in the Miss Universe contest - one of the big four international beauty pageants, and the one owned, until recently, by a certain Donald Trump.

Veena Wijewickrema is a medical student at the University of Canberra, but also the ACT contestant for Miss Universe Australia. Photo: Karleen Minney

It's a whole - ahem - universe away from where 19-year-old Wijewickrema currently sits, at a sun-dappled table in Manuka.

And there's a good excuse for the funny walk - a gruelling session at the gym, followed by a morning Zumba session with one of her clients, a disabled woman she works with through an agency designed to pair disabled people with the best carers.

Veena Wijewickrema could compete at Miss Universe. Photo: Karleen Minney

It's work she fits in around studying full-time at the University of Canberra, but it is, she says, barely work.

Not when she gets to jump around in leisure wear, take people shopping, cook them dinner or take them for morning coffees - things most of her clients are completely unable to do by themselves.

"I would do it for free. I say it all the time - I can't believe I'm getting paid for this," she says.

She's also studying medical science, with a view to getting into medicine, and one day becoming a surgeon. Her life is full; she could barely fit in this interview.

Why, then, is she competing in a beauty pageant? It all stems, she says, from when she was a kid, watching fashion shows and pageants on television, along with her older sisters and cousins.

"My family would make so many jokes, saying, 'Ha, you should do it, you've got the height'," she says. "And I am tall."

She's also, it must be said, heart-stoppingly beautiful, with all the lashes and the hair and the style you'd expect from the world of pageants.

She's the youngest in a Sri Lankan family of four daughters. Her parents migrated to Australia more than 30 years ago, and worked hard to send their daughters to Canberra Girls Grammar School.

Her father founded his own car dealership, and her mother runs a social enterprise with two of her older sisters, Nip and Gayana, who has Down syndrome, another driving factor in Wijewickrema's life.

She says it was her mother who encouraged her, early on, to give modelling a try, as long as she didn't forget where she was from.

"My mum always said that you can be as beautiful as you want, but it's everything on the inside that shines through, and I think that's where I get my confidence from - it's not really from my looks," she says.

She quickly realised, though, that she would never have what it took to be a model, for the simple fact that she had no intention of starving herself.

"I'm not massive, but I'm broad, I'm a very athletic kind of build," she says.

"I hate losing a competition, but I don't want to be skinny. I want a six-pack - I like a girl with guns. I think being muscly is sexy. Any girl can be skinny, it's sexy to be strong, and it's hard work."

She did, at one stage, win a local modelling competition on the Gold Coast, which was a buzz. But it was something one of the other contestants said about her that stuck.

"This girl thought she was saying under her breath, "Is she allowed to compete because she's brown?'," she says.

The comment left her miffed and furious, a tough call for someone who tries not to take herself too seriously.

And it had hardly escaped her notice over years of watching fashion that none of the girls looked anything like her. "There are no brown girls representing Australia!

"There are always brown girls representing women of colour in Malaysia or African countries, or India, but there was no-one of colour representing Australia. I thought, I'm Australian, why can't I do it?"

An all-or-nothing type of person, she went ahead and filled in the forms, having no inkling of what lay ahead.

And now, having won the state finals - she's the only Canberra contender this year - she's gearing up for a trip to Bali with the other Australian contestants, before competing in the national competition in June.

There, she'll be expected to don evening wear and answer questions about her life and aspirations. She's smart and has plenty to say, so this isn't the part that fazes her.

"It's not the interviews, not the talking - none of that scare me," she says.

"It's the swimsuit that's the scariest bit for me."

Indeed, it's hard to imagine anyone, let alone Wijewickrema, voluntarily standing before a judging panel wearing the smallest garments possible, and not feel, well, judged. "I want to be a surgeon, a trauma surgeon in the army," she says.

"There's nothing in that that scares me, it only drives me... I've already worked with cadaveric specimens, as part of my study. It really interests me."

But the swimsuit part? She may be sporty, but she insists she had barely ever worn a bikini before the state finals.

For the Australian finals in June, she'll be up on stage, primped and plucked and shined with all of herself out there. She just hopes the judges will see through the lack of clothing to the woman herself.

"I'd rather model my personality. It sounds very lame and cliched, but I want to be able to have a platform, not to just promote this brand or that brand, but what I think and what I believe in," she says.

"There is a lot that I have to learn from this. It's definitely making me ask myself, 'Who am I, what is it that I stand for, what is it that I'm proud of?' You never really get asked these questions in everyday life, and then you have to think about it.

"But really, I just want to do Canberra proud."

Veena Wijewickrema will be competing in the Miss Universe Australia finals in Melbourne in June.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6028517/setting-her-sights-on-the-universe/