 |
 |
 |
 |
1. Me, now.
2. Being Scottish.
3. My little sister Heather is very stylish.
4. My father is also very stylish.
5. Mum leading the Queenscliff ferry.
6. My older little sister Helen on a slide at Dismal Swamp in Tasmania.
7. It’s quite a long slide.
8. Very long, actually.
9. Me in 1976 when my first book was published. (Questionable reason to use ancient picture of me looking shiny.)
10. The late, great Michael Dugan, my first editor.
11. The also great Dmetri Kakmi, my current editor.
12. Children have always loved me.
13. Up Notre Dame with friends in 1984.
14. My extremely cool friend, Mr Erazmus, being Buddhist.
15. At Borobudur, Central Java, in 1996, seeking Buddhists.
16. Visiting a volcano, Vanuatu, 1988. (More exciting than it looks, thank goodness.)
17. At Whitsunday Voices Youth Literature Festival in 2008. (As I recall, no one else was in the tent.)
18. A lot of writers and illustrators at the Ipswich Festival of Children’s Literature, 2007.
19. Me being very tired with artist Frane Lessac, authors Mark Greenwood and Anita Heiss at the end of the Ipswich Festival of Children’s Literature, 2007. (I put this in because of photo number nine. Anita Heiss used our St Kilda house as one of the locations in her book, Avoiding Mr Right. She asked for our permission, of course, and we were happy to give it. We like Anita.)
20. Artist Marc McBride, author Sofie Laguna, author/artist Leigh Hobbs and me at the launch of Paul Collins’ anthology, Trust Me. We’ve all got stuff in it. Sofie is gorgeous, as you can see. Nevertheless, her book, One Foot Wrong, is one of the most harrowing adult novels I have ever read. It actually gave me nightmares.
21. At Kimberley Writers’ Festival, 2007, with writer/illustrator Jeannie Baker and Rick Grossman from Ghostwriters (and The Hoodoo Gurus – woo hoo!).
22. Dad’s eyebrows after the explosion.
23. On the farm, 1994.
24. Ponies.
25. More ponies.
26. St Kilda, Victoria. Where I live.
27. Satka, a city in Chelyabinsk Oblast, on the western slope of the southern Urals in Russia. Where I don't live.
28. But my books are there.
29. Jeannette Rowe, Marjory Gardner and Lee Fox, three delightful students at Ivanhoe Girls's Grammar School who neglected to tell me that my shirt looks stupid.
30. Partying hard in 1978 with fellow members of Camberwell Youth Theatre, who neglected to tell me that my entire head looks stupid.
31. Owing to a clerical error, my book The Life of a Teenage Body-snatcher was shortlisted for The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Here I am standing next to Vic Premier Ted Baillieu. You'll note that even though I am standing in front of Mr Baillieu, his head still appears considerably larger than mine, which is a bit of a whopper in itself.
