Sussan Ley says she once pulled a gun on a man while camping
In an exclusive interview with The Australian Women's Weekly, newly appointed opposition leader Sussan Ley recalled the time she pulled a gun on a man while she was camping.
Moderated by Tomas Kauer 
Opposition leader Sussan Ley has recalled the time she was forced to pull a gun on a man while she was camping overnight.
In an exclusive interview with The Australian Women's Weekly, Ley said as a young woman she had recently qualified as a pilot and was heading for her first gig in Thargomindah, about 1000km inland from Brisbane.
She left her unit in Coogee and started driving to Queensland.
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She pulled over for the night on a road between Nyngan and Narromine and set up her swag, she told the magazine.
"Then in came a motorbike with headlights glaring at me and I remember sitting up and hearing this huge noise … the person lifted the visor on their helmet and said, 'Ah, you're here all by yourself, are you?" she recalled.
"I reprised a line from a Clint Eastwood movie. It was something like: 'I'm here with my tall skinny mate'."
During her road trip, she stopped at the Queanbeyan gun shop and bought a semi-automatic rifle, which was legal at the time.
She said her father had given her some safety lessons before she left.
"The gun was literally lying down the side of the sleeping bag, so I was able to pick it up and wave it in the general direction of this individual," Ley said.
"I think my hands were shaking so badly." The rifle wasn't loaded but it did the job...he was gone like that."
After the incident, she told the magazine that she jumped into her car and drove the rest of the way to Thargomindah, non-stop.
Ley was elected as the new member of the Liberal Party after a devastating loss for her predecessor, Peter Dutton, at the federal election.
She made history as the first woman ever elected to run the party.
