About

I grew up in Warrnambool, the land of the Gunditjimara people on the wild southern coast of Victoria, Australia.

There is my mother next to me on the top left of the picture above. She is holding me in her arms as she sits on the steps of my childhood home. That big sandstone house with its big garden buzzing with insects was so influential in my life. It motivated my love of plants, my obsession with landscapes, and the fiercely protective feelings I have toward all creatures in the natural world.

The photo of me in the far left corner was taken in South Africa, where I travelled in my early twenties. I am standing in front of the Department of Home Affairs in Pretoria, where I was married. The figure on the extreme right is my partner Tony, walking on Noordhoek Beach not far from Cape Town. We spent a lot of time on that beach when we first met and have taken walks on many beaches since.

On the right in the large picture is a photo of six multi-media artists, taken in the 1980s─ I’m third from the right. We were exhibiting in our show called Imagemakers at Makers Gallery in Sandringham, Victoria. That’s where I spent fourteen years displaying artwork and helping establish that community gallery. Those seminal experiences in the artworld continue to inform my research and writing.

Our beloved dog Toto, now long gone, is in the shopping trolley. Animals are so important to me, always in my life and my thoughts. At the top centre of the tin shed, you can see my daughter’s delight as she sees a rabbit for the first time. Just behind the trolley, many years later, you can see me writing about animals on my laptop at her home in Toowong in Brisbane, Queensland.

In 1988, we moved to Hobart, Tasmania, where I began a long association with the University of Tasmania. I looked after a historical collection, the Royal Society of Tasmania Library, then embarked on a Bachelor of Arts Degree with Honours. During those years working and studying, I was a recipient of six prizes in literature and history and awarded a University Medal in 2000.  Highlights of my academic career were an innovative Honours thesis “Feathering the Text: (Re)reading the Animal in Medieval Writing” and selection for a ten-day workshop at Australian National University’s Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies called “Sleight of Sight”. Its convener, Greg Dening, was ‘one of the most imaginative, original and reflective minds working in the fields of history and historiography’. The skills I learnt and the friends I made during that time were invaluable and inspirational.

My PhD research explored the impact of images on the extinction of the thylacine, or Tasmanian ‘tiger’. It was a project that involved travel to libraries and scientific institutions in UK and almost every state of Australia, including Indigenous rock engraving sites in the remote northwest. I have been interviewed about my findings in Australian Geographic and on national and local radio, as well as The Bulletin, Scientific American and Danish broadsheet newspaper Weekendavisen. Much of this work took place as I became involved in the formation and development of the interdisciplinary field of Animal Studies, sometimes called Human-Animal Studies (HAS). They were exciting days: I solely compiled and edited the Australian Animal Studies Group News Bulletin─ a quarterly e-publication that was sent to hundreds of readers around the world─ from 2008 to 2014 and took part in numerous conferences in UK, US and Australia. Recently, I embraced the closely connected field of Critical Plant Studies. This is an area that provides me with endless opp0rtunities to write about plants and gardens.

My writing has now turned to creative non-fiction essays, a move that has invigorated my writing and provided a different and wider audience for my work. It has been liberating to express my feelings in a new way about the creatures and experiences that are so important to me.