About Me

I was born in Sydney in 1945. My crippled mum needed my help so I left school at fourteen. Two years later I met my husband-to-be and we married when I was eighteen. My son, Anthony was born when I was twenty-one.

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We had a fishing trawler and I did the books for the business and did odd jobs, but nothing academic for twenty-six years.

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Due to my dad passing from cancer, Mum needed assistance and came to live with us in Ballina. Sadly, five years later she had a stroke and went into a nursing home close by. I visited every day and helped as a volunteer. One of the nurses was leaving to train as a registered nurse and she encouraged me to do the same when I told her I wanted to be a nurse. I took the mature age entrance exam as a forty-year-old and got in. Due to doing well, I was accepted into the graduate program at Lismore Bas Hospital in 1986. Later, I did my Bachelor's Degree in health science at Armidale University. I worked there for several years until travelling around Australia for four months with my husband, brother and sister-in-law.

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In early 1992, I left my marriage and headed to Sydney to commence Palliative Care at a leading hospice. While there I fostered my passion for Palliative Care and commenced post-graduate studies in Advanced Palliative Care. I became a consultant for the Hospice Community Palliative Care Team.

During this time I was commissioned with one of the PC specialists, David Gorman for an introduction to Canterbury Hospital. I wrote a medical paper on PC while there and was offered the job of Clinical Nurse Consultant and later Level 3 Supervisor on night duty.

In 2004, I moved to beautiful Sandstone Point in Queensland and started doing aged care at the RSL War Veterans, a tenure that lasted five years. I became a nursing temp before returning from nursing at sixty-eight.

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This meant a downsize to an over-50s village at Pebble Beach Sandstone Point. and I became a part-time sales assistant for the village - a shock! I needed to complete real estate training for the developer but worked on-site sales until the last villa was sold in 2018.

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A discovery of the manuscript I commenced thirty-six years earlier, lead me to my publication journey. There were seven months of research about South America, specifically Argentina (the Pampas).

I have always hated injustice and inequality, including women's stand in the world. I was half-way through the manuscript when I found a writing class offered by Bribie Island Library. It was free and run by Professor Emeritus Gary Crew (creative writing). And the rest as they say is - history!!!

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