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I've been a science and health writer for most of my working life, having trained as a Biology laboratory technician and then moving on to journalism when my children were young. Science in all its forms, but especially the life sciences, has always fascinated me from a small child, and biology seemed like the best way to earn a living from a passion to understand how living things operate.
Then I discovered writing and became a journalist. So the passion to understand also became a passion to explain. My first published articles were about trees and specialised timbers. I was a research assistant to a timber project in the far northwest of Tasmania - Australia's tiny island state - in an area of great beauty and deep dark cool climate rainforests. The project's aim was to identify minor species suitable for craft and furniture making and get them to market before they were destroyed by clear-felling for plantations. (In Tasmania, the environment is always contentious - a tussle between preserving great natural beauty and the need to provide jobs.) I researched and co-wrote a monograph on six of these beautiful timbers, The Fine Timber Story, and wrote a series of articles for a local newspaper on the history, uses and beautiful objects created from them.
For some years I was a Jill of all trades journalist, writing on local politics, agricultural shows, crime, the court rounds, house prices, new industry, old history, art and craft. Newspaper training teaches you how to get the gist of a story really quickly, to do the research and turn it into something the readers want to know about, before they even know they want it.
Then, about 12 years ago, I found my niche in writing for health publications. For 5 years I edited an Australasian magazine for hospital and aged care facility managers, Hospital&healthcare. I then briefly edited a magazine for veterinary surgeons, The Veterinarian. I still contribute regularly to both of these. I pursued my interest in complementary therapies I had developed while writing for an Australian pharmacy publication, and wrote a series of articles for the consumer publication Nature & Health.
A selection of my articles, including the original Fine Timber Story, is up on my website.
I never fail to be excited by advances in science and health care, and keenly read research reports from doctors and scientists all over the world. When I started studying biology, the DNA double helix was the latest big thing - look how far we've come since then! It's that excitement and the capacity of the human brain to imagine great things and then to work out how to achieve them, that I want to share with you.