Lesley MooneyThe author Lesley June Mooney (nee Hubbard), was born in the early nineteen-thirties in Perth, Western Australia, during the Depression. She was educated there at boarding colleges until aged fifteen, after her parents separated. Then she, her fatherand brother travelled by train to Nullagine to work at Roy Hill station. This was the first of three outback properties in which she enjoyed an interesting life. Following a short break in Wyndham, she spent two and a half years as a clerk in Darwin, then Sydney, before travelling back to Perth.When aged twenty-one, Lesley was asked to cook at a cattle station in North Queensland when the manager's wife was pregnant, even though she was totally inexperienced for the role. Later on she was asked to cook and care for an elderly man to help the bush nurse at McKinlay. Her sick patient passed away, and having met her future husband Ernie, they married (1953) and moved to Mackay to live and work in his various building trades. By 1966 they had six children: five daughters and one son, and were living on a riverside property called Beacon Pastures. Later, Ernie leased a country hotel for more than six years, and he was a popular publican. Lesley combined working at home in two businesses, and ran a coffee shop in town until 1989, then with financial help she purchased a 5 acre hill property at Habana, and she and her husband parted. After a marriage of thirty-eight years, she and Ernie divorced to live different lives, but stayed friends. He remarried and later died.As a Taurean, Lesley is a creative lady: an artist, pianist, singer, composer and gardener. She has enjoyed thirty years of dancing in all styles, including tap, ballroom, Latin, jive and belly dancing. She learned pottery, woodwork and screen printing at TAFE. At U3A she organised a Seniors Theatre Group to give concerts, then ran a tap dance group who entertained locally for some years. Lesley started writing at Habana - first 480 poems in a ten book series, 'Fragments of the Mind', then wrote novels, gaining experience on the internet. After moving into town to be near her family, she completed six novels, some self-published with more begun. Read More Read Less