Queenslander, Jill Staunton, was born into a farming family. As a child, she was raised west of Rockhampton near Baralaba on a Hereford cattle and cotton property memorable for its brown snakes, goats and bales of wispy cotton.
Many school holidays were spent on her grandparents’ dairy, sheep and crop farm. Here, her grandfather taught her to align fence posts by eye and to offside in the dairy and shearing shed whilst her grandmother taught her to stew apricots fresh from the orchard. The fun was in eating the fruit then counting the seeds to her grandmother’s rhymes – tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, silk, satin, cotton, rags.
As a teenager, Jill spent time on Yaramulla, the ironbark and speargrass Brahman cattle property her parents owned (later declared a national park and the site of the Undara Lava Tubes) then on Boonamin, a property where her parents bred Brangus cattle.
Although she left the outback to teach English and History, Jill attributes her love of language to her grandmother and mother and her love of writing Outback fiction, Australian historical romance and poetry to her rural Australian upbringing. Jill resides in Townsville with her husband.
Books by Jill Staunton
