The first piece of education I remember receiving was in Year One, at Our Lady Queen of Peace Primary School in Greystanes, Western Sydney. I would have been six. Mrs Szukalski – a tall, blonde woman in her early twenties, coincidentally (or not) my first crush that wasn’t fictional – told the class that for homework we had to write a one-page story about dinosaurs. My story was four pages long, and probably included dragons and space ships. I was an early reader, an inquisitive, imaginative child, and that creative task fused everything into a clarity of purpose. I became hooked on the power of words.
I was born and grew up in the suburbs of Western Sydney. From when I was very little – six, to be precise – I knew that I wanted to create worlds and stories and reach out and communicate with people about the world the way I saw it. When I look at pictures of me as a child there’s usually a big grin on my face.