About Jacinta

When a father passes, the mind plays tricks. It starts to find memories at every turn, lovely reminders of a Dad that cared. A funny, quirky, annoying, interesting man.

  Like the window display I saw a few weeks after losing Dad. There was an ancient Remington typewriter in the window. Dad brought one of these home when I was about 7. He knew I’d love it and I did. On the very first day, I started typing, then found Dad and announced, “There is no Q.” I was convinced of this and embarrassed when he laughingly pointed out the letter Q to me. The little writer in me then got down to business copying stories from my favourite books and loving the sense of putting words on a page.

  I always wrote. English was my favourite subject, creative writing my place of absolute freedom. In Year 8 when I was 13 years old, I wrote a story about a sniper hiding in a building and preparing to shoot his innocent target. The teacher was worried, spoke to me privately, asked if I was okay, checked in with my parents. I was so surprised. “It’s just a story,” I said.

  I loved school and was a very social teenager, but despite good scores in my HSC, I chose not to go to uni straight away, and enjoyed working for four years at the local Council. In 1985, I travelled with Mum to my grandparents’ home in Dandenong, our intention being to enrol me at Monash University the following day. My Pa marked this occasion indelibly on our minds. That night he died of a massive heart attack and Mum and I travelled around Monash Uni campus the next day ticking boxes and filling out forms in a state of shock.

  Thankfully, the rest of my experience at Monash Uni was remarkable, full of people and drama, laughter and tears, intelligent conversation, friendship and fun. And importantly, learning. I majored in English Literature and History and I thrived in that space. I missed it when I left, taught for a couple of years but left teaching underwhelmed by the restrictive nature of learning for young people.

  So began my checkerboard of job experiences. I sold Italian educational books for an Italian publisher in Carlton then became a manager for a large book retail chain, a job which took me places over the next four years. I worked in Frankston, Chadstone, Tullamarine Airport and finally, Alice Springs. We had stayed in Alice when I was 14 years old on our family trip around Australia and I had fallen in love with the place. I couldn’t believe my luck in finding work there 18 years later. I expanded my job outlook and studied and worked in environmental education which led to me bumping into my future husband, Ian, who had studied the same course and was working as a ranger. We married in 2001. By then, I had lived in Alice for seven years and Ian for eleven years. It was time for our next adventure.

  In 2002, we moved to East Gippsland where we live today. We had our son in 2005, and Ian studied Fine Furniture Design and produced some exceptional woodwork pieces. I began working in welfare, completing my Social Work degree in 2013. I worked in youth homelessness, school welfare, indigenous liaison, migrant support and finally, Gambler’s Help counselling, my current job.

  In 2008, I found my passion, something our Dad said every person should hope to find. A free trial with Ancestry was the beginning of a love affair, combining my interest in history, my fascination with human nature, and my ongoing desire to write. Initially, my manuscripts were non-fiction stories of male ancestors as they are of course easier to find. I self-published Robert Whatmough: Pioneering Victorian Horticulturalist in 2017. Today, I have a new writing direction, to tell the stories of my female ancestors and to tap into the creative style of historical fiction. I aim to add two sequels to my upcoming publication Alice A Tasmanian Story based on two of Alice’s sisters. I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I enjoy writing them.