Here’s my story, all the long facts condensed into a short summary because I couldn’t bear to bore you.

I am actually English although I’ve lived most of my life in Australia.  My parents were ten-pound Poms and came to Australia in the 50s and settled in Sunshine a suburb in Melbourne. There wasn’t anything sunny about Sunshine in the 50s and 60s when I grew up.  It was a melting pot of confused and frightened immigrants. I think we were the only English-speaking people living in our street. 

I left Sunshine in 1967 to do the working holiday thing in the UK like many young Australians did then.  I lived in London during the swinging sixties but completely missed them due to my passion for spotted dick (a pudding!)  I lived with an aunt in London who was an outstanding cook, and instead of racing out each night for liberated swinging sex, I raced home to feast on toad in the hole and suet puddings.

A couple of years later I looked like suet pudding when I embarked on board the Southern Cross ship to return home and met my Geoffrey – a dashing engineer officer - who somehow saw through the layers of blubber and fell in love with me. We married shortly after and I spent nine years travelling the world with him on board cargo ships and massively big oil tankers.

We settled in Melbourne in suburbia – as far away from Sunshine as possible - brought up three fabulous kids, moved to Queensland and when the kids all left home, started travelling again.  This was in 2000.  In the meantime I’d dabbled in writing and got myself a job at the Noosa News as a feature writer where I started writing about my travels.  Finally, when most people my age start thinking about retirement, I started thinking about a career as a travel author.  So I sat down one night after work, started writing a book about my Italian travels, and now here I am.  A travel author.   I still work full time at the Noosa News, write a weekly column for the Sunshine Coast Daily and also write freelance for other travel publications. 

In 2006 I met Amanda, a New Zealand woman living in France and my life took another turn.  Amanda contacted me after reading my books, invited me to visit her in the South of France.  Long story short.  I did.  We clicked.  We hatched up a plan for me to take small tour groups to Provence to stay in her large 18th century stone home.  Our first tour was such an outstanding success, I wrote a book about it - Ooh La La! A French Romp.   Now I’m a tour guide as well as an author and a journalist