Born in Parramatta, in Sydney, Australia, the youngest of four children in a Catholic family. A lot of her childhood was spent in bed with bronchial infections and asthma - these are the days before Ventolin - and she was forbidden to run around. Her mother says she was very lucky that she was a reader, but she suspect that she would have turned into a reader if she hadn't been one already. She noticed how many writers and illustrators have had a childhood illness, or sometimes a shift to a strange place - something that turns them into an observer rather than a participant. Any reader can fully participate in books, however, and so she became the classic bookworm. She went to Catholic schools: St Mary's at Rydalmere and then Our Lady of Mercy College in Parramatta for high school. She was blessed with excellent teachers, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Then she went to the University of Technology, Sydney (at that time the NSW Institute of Technology) and did a BA in Communications.