Louise Elliott writes . . .
Reading, art, and telling myself stories were what I enjoyed most as a child. They were my escapes.
Born in England, I was an only child of very conservative parents. My father was an intellectual academic man, but rather poor at sports; my mother wasn’t brainy but she was a champion athlete. I took after them both—not brainy and hopeless at sports. That made life difficult at home—when I was at home. I was sent to boarding school when I was ten, which was a truly horrible experience, but it also made deciding my future simple. Since art was the only thing I was any good at (reading and day-dreaming weren’t really career options) I went to art school.
I was sixteen, rock’n’roll and Elvis were freaking our parents out, I dyed my hair all the colours of the rainbow—at once, like a feather duster—and learnt to flirt and jive and draw and paint. My real life had at last begun.
I married an artist. We had three children in four years, moved to a very old farmhouse, added horses, donkeys, goats, geese, chickens, bantams, ducks and bees to the family, and grew all our own fruit and vegies.
Earning a living was a problem, but we survived … somehow. I designed a range of toys (you can see them on my website) and I started to write and illustrate.
We came to Australia in 1983 and it is here, away from where I grew up, that I have been able to become an author, drawing on my history in The Apple Tree and Dangerous Redheads and what it feels like to be an emigrant in Lone Bandits.
And writing has also given me licence to communicate, explore, experiment and dream, to tell myself stories, push out boundaries, become ageless, timeless and formless, to be both intensely in this existence and also to escape.
Wolf Hunting is my ninth book … I think I’m just beginning to hit my stride.
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