Writer, traveller and former teacher Jane Sandilands was prompted to write her life story when her grandsons asked her what toys she had as a toddler in wartime England.
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Born in 1943, she remembers the sound of sirens warning of an imminent German bombing and the smell of the damp bomb shelter.
Aged just five, Ms Sandilands was devastated to find herself on a ship bound for Australia.
All she thought about was escaping from Australia.
In 1961, aged 18, she responded to an advertisement by UK employment agency Brook Street Bureau for secretaries to come to England to be 'temps' who filled in when secretaries were sick or on holiday.
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Teacher, writer
She returned to Australia a few years later and was a beneficiary of Gough Whitlam's free university education policy.
Following a teaching career, in the late 1980s she started freelance writing.
After living in Melbourne for 30 years, by 1998 Ms Sandilands was itching for change.
"I saw a cartoon with two leopards and one said to the other 'if you are going to change your spots do it in your mid-50s'.
"That cartoon spoke to me," Ms Sandilands told the audience for the launch of her book Lost and Found in Bermagui Library on Monday, March 20.
Long love affairs with Bermagui, Henry
She rented out her Prahran house, intending to return two years later.
She found herself in Bermagui and just like Goldilocks decided it was just right.
While writing about an oyster farmer in Batemans Bay in 2001 she met a man called Henry.
They started dating and "have been dating for more than 20 years".
The writing process
COVID presented the opportunity to write her book as travel was impossible and demand for travel writers non-existent.
Af 50,000 words she contacted a professional reader for feedback.
It was not encouraging.
The story was full of holes as it dallied up and down the avenues of her life.
"I sulked for a few months after that," she said.
Nevertheless, she set a deadline to be published before she turned 80 on March 25, 2023.
At the book launch she encouraged people to write their life story and she plans to run guided small group tutorials later in the year.
"Everyone has a story and you don't have to scratch much below the surface to find it.
"Everybody is interesting and has a life that means something to other people," she said.
As for those early toys, she had an almost bald koala, a cardboard doll with cut-out paper outfits and a wooden sled her grandfather made that she held onto with a piece of rope.
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