Meredith Costain

I grew up on a dairy farm on the Koo Wee Rup swamp in West Gippsland, Victoria. I preferred reading books and writing stories and poems to milking cows (although I loved playing with our dog and chooks).

My cousins Lynnette and Susan and I produced a newspaper called The Thrilling Three, and when I was nine I had my first poem published in the Junior Age section of The Age newspaper. It was called My Little Creek and I was paid 17 shillings and sixpence for it.

I made up most of my poems while riding my bike to school and piano lessons. When I came home I'd race up to the haystack and scribble them down in old exercise books.

After finishing school and university I taught English for a while in the country (more cows!) then travelled around the world to places like Siberia, Morocco and northern Sumatra. I started teaching again in Melbourne, played in a few rock and blues bands, and wrote more stories, which were published in Pursuit, Challenge, Explore and Cometmagazines.

After a fight with a car while crossing the road on a pedestrian crossing in Paris (the car won) I decided what I really wanted to do was become a full-time writer. So now that’s what I do!

Lots of my books contain the two things I like the most: music and dogs.

Some of them, like Musical Harriet, have both!

These days I live in an old bluestone house in the inner-city with my partner, children’s author Paul Collins. We have heaps of pets: a kelpie cross named Jack, a red heeler called Molly, Harriet the cat, seven chooks, seven goldfish and several stray possums, lizards, flying foxes, parrots and bush rats.

Besides writing, I love sleeping, reading, eating chocolate and playing blues piano.