About Me: From Cow Pats to Cradle Mountain - and Every Hallmark Movie in Between

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If life came with a blockbuster trailer, mine would start with a tiny girl living twelve years on all-boys boarding school grounds - basically the ultimate crash course in surviving noise, mischief, and boyhood chaos.

That little girl was me.

I grew up in a world where boys outnumbered girls by… well, a lot. I have one actual brother, but my early years on the grounds of two different boys’ boarding schools made it feel like I had hundreds. Life was never quiet. Students sprinted past our windows on their way to class, cricket balls smacked loudly into nets, the bell echoed across ovals, and someone always seemed to be knocking at our door needing help, a signature, or a Band-Aid.

And honestly? I loved it.

Life on campus was colourful, busy, and deeply communal. We ate dinners in the dining hall with students. We danced awkwardly at bush dances where not a single person was on beat. I had endless tennis lessons and just as many horse-riding lessons simply because that’s what was happening around me. School events didn’t happen around our life - they were our life. Fundraisers, concerts, open days, athletics carnivals… I had a front-row seat to all of it.

My dad once went ten straight weeks without leaving the school grounds. It wasn’t a job we watched him go off to each morning - it was a world we stepped into with him. Mum was just as invested and involved, and our family operated as a true “all in” team. Looking back, I think that’s one of the reasons I loved my childhood so much: we weren’t observing life from the sidelines; we were part of the heartbeat of it.

My playtime was wonderfully unrefined. I learned to jump bikes before I learned caution. I played noughts and crosses in wet cow pats - and yes, the loser had to face plant. I roamed the property for hours with nothing but imagination to guide me. Sometimes I preferred being at the boarding school over being at my own school, simply because it felt so alive, so familiar, so full of possibility.

When we eventually moved to the coast so my dad could help start a brand-new Kindergarten–Year 12 school, the rhythm didn’t change much. Initially, we lived just 100 metres from the new campus, close enough to feel the same hum of community life - rehearsals, sports days, parent nights, school events. It felt like a continuation of the adventure, just with a sea breeze instead of country dust. Those years shaped me profoundly. They taught me that education is not merely academic; it’s relational, communal, lived. It’s something you participate in. Something you carry into adulthood.

My passion for property surprised even me. It began in Year 7 during two quiet weeks at home recovering from getting my tonsils removed. While I was healing, Mum was selecting finishes for our new family home - tiles, cabinetry, tapware, flooring - and I tagged along to every appointment. Something sparked in me during those conversations with builders and designers. I suddenly cared deeply about floor plans and paint colours. After that, realestate.com.au felt more like a hobby than a website, and open homes became something I genuinely looked forward to. To this day, I still scroll listings more often than Instagram.

After school, I also spent a season living in the UK, once again working in an amazing boarding school - stepping right back into the rhythm of community life I had grown up in, just with colder mornings and far more layers of clothing. It was a formative, stretching, joy-filled year.

So later, even though I’d already earned early entry into university to study teaching, I also completed my real estate license and auctioneer’s certificate. I wanted to keep doors open and follow where my curiosity led. I worked in real estate while at uni - doing open homes on Saturdays, studying at night, learning negotiation and human behaviour on the job. It was a funny sort of double life, but it taught me so much.

Somewhere within that busy, hybrid season, I started dating one of the boys I grew up with - the cow-pat partner, the tree-climbing friend, the one who had always been there in the background of my childhood. When he proposed, he actually went back and asked his old principals for my hand in marriage. The whole scene felt like a time warp where childhood and adulthood collided - and somehow, it worked.

Eventually I stepped fully into teaching, and it felt like everything clicked. I taught in schools rich in community and warmth, places that held high expectations but high care. I choreographed musicals, supported students, cheered at sports carnivals, and even worked with the Board of Studies on a confidential project that never eventuated but made me thrilled to contribute. Teaching grounded me. It gave me confidence. It showed me the kind of educator - and person - I wanted to be.

And then life shifted in the most tender and stretching way. Our journey to parenthood was a long one - ten years of marriage before our daughter arrived, after a five-year fertility journey marked by waiting, heartbreak, hope, and healing. Endometriosis was part of that story - something far too many women experience, yet far too few speak openly about. It shaped me, softened me, strengthened me, and made the moment our miracle arrived all the more profound.

When she finally came into our world, it was as though the pace of life we had been living no longer fit who we were or what we valued. I wanted presence. I wanted simplicity. I wanted space for a childhood that wasn’t rushed.

So we left Sydney, moved back to the coast, and stepped into homeschooling - something I never imagined doing, yet now see as one of the greatest blessings in our lives.

When I’m not homeschooling or working on Wonder & Wild, you’ll most likely find me outside. I love hiking, camping, waterfalls, and wide-open spaces. I’ve walked the Overland Track in Cradle Mountain, driven to the southernmost point of Tasmania just to stand at the edge of the ocean, flown to Darwin to swim in NT waterholes, taken spontaneous family adventures that made no sense except that they filled our lives with beauty and memory - and once, we even decided on a whim to drive all the way to Cameron Corner just to hear dingos howl and wander underground through opal mines. It was wild and random and one of our favourite adventures.

Being outdoors feels like coming home to myself.

At home, I’m a pink-loving, Hallmark-movie-watching, Friends-quoting, Gilmore-Girls-nostalgic person who will always choose folding washing to the sound of a renovation show. After moving more than twenty times in my life, I’m finally planting real roots - literally - with a kitchen garden that brings me disproportionate joy. My husband affectionately calls me “Princess Snooze-a-lot,” and I can’t even deny it: sleep is my love language.

From boarding school lawns to London winters, from cow pats to curriculum design, from heartbreak to miracles, from constant movement to finally feeling home… this is me. And sincerely? I wouldn’t change a thing.

And because every person is made up of a thousand quirks, here are a few of mine: I only started drinking coffee in my mid-30s. I don’t do scary movies. I drink distilled water. Pink is my favourite colour. I wear minimal makeup. I’ve watched Friends at least ten times over. I once owned a jet ski and still regret selling it. I can ride a horse. I love baking. I’m gluten- and dairy-free but goats milk is fine. I’m a natural activator - ideas turn into action quickly. I love people but recharge quietly on my own. I watch house renovation shows like it’s a competitive sport. And being a mum? It’s my whole personality, and I absolutely love that.

This is me - sincerely, simply, and with all the pieces that make me who I am.