The nicest thing about writing your autobiography is that you get to look through all the old photograph albums to find the best photos to use to tell people about you. I thought I’d use these photos to fill you in on the sort of life that I’ve had. Of course, to tell you more you’d have to sit with me for hours and hours and hours and listen to the short story of every photo – boring!

I was born in Victoria, in a place called Traralgon, in 1946. We lived here until we moved to Bairnsdale in about 1950 so my first years of school were in Bairnsdale. The photo that I have here of my sister, Anne, being ‘Little Bo-Peep’ and me being a Princess was when the Queen got to be Queen Elizabeth. Our town had a celebration and we all wore fancy dress. I thought I looked gorgeous and was having a pretty good time at the local hall until some great, clumping galoot of a boy trod on my dress and tore the bottom bit. It was made out of pink crepe paper and I think, by the end of the day, I must have looked like a giant roll of toilet tissue. My sister didn’t get wrecked and I guess that tells you a bit about us as well – she was always really neat.

Here is a photo of my mum, my sister, Anne, my brother, Jim and me. My dad was there behind the camera. That’s all of us. I was pretty sick all the time and spent a lot of time in bed (although I look pretty fit in this photo). The best way for me to get better was for our family to move to a warmer climate – which we did.

This is a photo of me in our front yard in Caringbah, in Sydney, NSW. I’m the one of the left holding two dogs. My sister and my mother are with me. We always had dogs and cats and goldfish and just about one of everything else while we were growing up. At this time in my life I was enrolled at Port Hacking High School where I did my Leaving Certificate and went on the work in the taxation office and then an office or two. I wasn’t all that good at office work so I took a job as governess in Wanaaring outside Bourke for twelve months.

Here I am being a governess! This meant teaching a dear little boy and helping out around the property. In this photo I’m being a lamb-catcher as we were lamb-marking. I imagined fluffy little baa-ing sheep like the ones that litter story books. Wrong. They were big heffalumps with fur full of burs and prickles. You can see how much dust there was – it was in the middle of a very severe drought. Many, many sheep were sent off to properties further away as we didn’t have enough grass for them to each on our 54,000 acres. My life on a property led me back to teaching. I tried working in a bank for a while and didn’t really love it – although I tried. Eventually I took myself off to Teacher’s College and began the rest of my life as a teacher. I’ve worked in schools all around Sydney and finally landed on the far north coast of New South Wales in 1983.

During all this time I’d never really considered that I could be anything other that what I was being. A teacher and a mother to Lachlan, Emma, Nicolette and step-mother to Melissa. I was, though, in a lot of situations that called for writing – I used to love writing letters to my Grandmother, Rene, when I was out in Wanaaring and loved even more hearing from her. She wrote very, very funny letters. I began to enjoy writing funny things, letters, poetry and bits and pieces for my classes.

Then I wrote a book for my daughter, Emma, because she hated going to school and I thought this would be one good way to help her understand that it was something that she simply had to do. A friend of mine did some art work and she suggested that we send the book to a publisher. Jane, the publisher, really liked it and told me to fix it up – which I’ve never managed to do. I really didn’t know how. She asked me to send her another manuscript which I did. It was the ‘Long Red Scarf’ and my life as a writer had begun.

I continue to teach (although not every day) and to write. I continue to own dogs and an aged cat who fumbles around keeping me company as I tap away at my work. She is going to form part of my new book – I think it’s going to be our last work together.

So, there you have it. Snapshots of bits of my life.