You are a writer. Tell us about your novels and how you started your writing career?
All of my novels are set in rural Australia – in the first two, the main characters lived and worked on farms, but in Purple Roads, the two main characters had a farm and lost it. They ended up living in a small country town in South Australia.
I like to a have a bit of a mystery/crime theme running through the books along with some fairly tough situations for the characters to get out of.
I want to be able to bring my world of farming into the lives of people who don’t live, breathe and see what I do everyday, so along with a (hopefully) exciting story line, I try to write so my readers are able to smell the open air, the sheep and cattle, or the hay drying – have you ever smelt that? Someone should bottle it.
I have always written and while I was at boarding school. I was a compulsive letter writer, born from the fact I loved receiving letters.
I think there was only a space of about six or seven years in which I didn’t write in some form and that was when I first left school until my youngest son went to kindy. Then I started writing in earnest, although I can honestly say I never had a dream to be published. I was just incredibly lucky Jeff Toghill (my mentor) told me I had a talent and I should try submitting to publishers… so I did and the rest, as they say, is history.
What advice would you have for anyone wanting to be a published author?
Keep trying, no matter what. Just because a publisher doesn’t want you today, doesn’t mean they may not want your manuscript in time to come – that’s what happened to me. At first they didn’t want Red Dust. I left it a while then resubmitted. It was then Allen and Unwin picked me up. Keep faith in yourself and keep trying. As the shout-line of Purple Roads says: ‘Some dreams are worth fighting for…’ and they are.
You live on 8,000 acres in rural WA. What is it about farm life that you love? And is it hard work?
I love the open spaces, the freedom of the land. I don’t like to be enclosed and with kilometres of nothing but space, trees and land, I never feel like that, out here. I love the sunrises and sunsets, the baby animals, the rain and green grass.
Yes, is the only answer to ‘is it hard work?’ There are days I fall into bed at 7.30pm. It’s physically hard – especially for a woman, but it teaches us to work smarter, not harder; if I have to lift a full wool ewe (maybe 65 – 70kg) onto the back of a ute (which might be about 5 foot off the ground), drag her onto a drum (which won’t be as high as the ute) and get her there in steps. (If you’re a farmer, you don’t need to go to the gym, we’re kept really fit by running after sheep, jumping and shoo-ing them in the yards and walking for long distances, when we get a flat tyre or the ute breaks down).
They’re long hours, especially during seeding, shearing and harvest. Some days we might work sixteen hours, grab a few hours sleep and get back into it.
And of course there are always the variances of the weather – if it doesn’t rain on time, it rains too much. But you know what? I wouldn’t be anywhere else.
What does being Australian mean to you?
Oh that’s a difficult question. In a way it means everything; lifestyle, culture, space. But in in comparison to family, it means nothing.
I love Australia and wouldn’t ever want to live anywhere else. This country is amazing and it runs through my veins.
Where are your favourite places to travel to and visit in Australia?
Well first off, I could never go past my old home, the mid-north of South Australia; in particular my old towns of Orroroo, Carrieton and our station Glenroy. I don’t get there enough.
I love Pemberton in ‘Karri-tree country’ down in the South West corner of WA – in fact if I ever get my choice, that’s where I’ll retire.
I love going to Alice Springs and Bond Springs Station, where my aunty, uncle and cousins live.
There are three places I am dying to go; the Snowy Mountains, the north of WA and Tasmania. I’ll get there one day – I keep thinking if hubby is keen on the fishing, we might get to two of them, anyway.
