“I was one of those judgmental parents,” says Swift, who has her fiancé, an aspiring policeman called Guy Crane, 25, and her mother Raelene Berich, 48, by her side. And she certainly never imagined forking out $2500 on airfares, hotels, make-up and cupcake dresses for this one contest. Travelling to Melbourne for a national child beauty pageant is not something that the stage-averse Swift thought she would ever do. “It looked like she was ready to go on a drag queen show.” The make-up at the last pageant, she says, was ridiculous. It’s airbrush make-up, which has pleased Swift, because you can still see Indianna’s freckles. Earlier, a woman came by to do Indianna’s face. Swift, a childcare group leader from Queensland, knows all about wiglets, and many other things besides, since joining the world of child beauty pageants in January. “That’s a wiglet,” says her mother Melita Swift, 25, pointing to the cascading brown curls pinned to her daughter’s head. Indianna, relaxed and smiling, is still in her nightwear – a pink onesie – but her hair looks ready for the red carpet. Inside this room is a beautiful, freckle-nosed five-year-old named Indianna Swift.
