Mrs King’s initial fundraising target was $500, but her final takings were $2260, with $1700 donated in cash alone. 

She came up with the idea to shave her head due to the focus on breast cancer at this time of the year and because it fell on the sixth anniversary of her daughter Paula’s mastectomy.

Her mother died from cancer in 1954.

“People handed me cash wherever I go. They would see my bald head and want to donate,” Mrs King said. 

“I had to send someone away saying ‘donate to the next person’ as I’d already finished fundraising.”

While these have been positive experiences, she said the head shave, which happened on November 11 at Styled by Goldilocks by her son-in-law Greg Byers, has brought her closer to the experiences cancer patients go through. 

“It’s given me a taste of what it would’ve been like to have chemotherapy,” she said. 

“I didn’t know there’s so much of a woman’s vanity wrapped up with their hair.”

She said she set her initial target at a conservative level as a lot of people she knows are pensioners and didn’t want to trouble them for donations which may have seemed excessive. 

“People have just been wonderful especially the people in the groups I’m in and from church...and my family have been fantastic,” she said. 

ashlea.pritchard@fairfaxmedia.com.au