Barbara Hickey a first-time author was born in Brisbane Queensland Australia. Married with three children and three grandchildren she is the second of seven children born to a stay-at-home mother, a former seamstress, and a father who was manual worker, and had been a prisoner of war and motorcycle despatch rider.

She grew up in the post-World War Two era in a developing suburb where many houses were owner-built. Her world was one of freedom and adventure with Saturday morning matinees, radio serials, and play in the homes of neighbours or the bushland surrounding the area. Church was part of life with the monks from the monastery on the hill ringing the Angelus at 12 midday and 6pm daily signalling time to be home. Not a great deal of discussion of politics or history occurred in the home as children were to be seen but not heard.

She was an inquisitive child who spent many hours exploring objects of family history including a diary kept on a voyage to Australia by her great grandmother in 1874, postcards and various documents.

Barbara was grateful to an aunt who paid for her last two years of Secondary schooling. Educated by Good Samaritan nuns she developed a love of education and a compassionate regard for her fellow beings admiring the nuns knowing that their colleagues had worked in Nagasaki soon after the dropping of the atomic bomb and establishing a school in Sasebo. Her hero was her Great Aunt, a winner of a university medal and a teacher with her first posting being the Lighthouse School on Moreton Island in 1905.

Barbara taught children from the ages of five to seventeen in both Primary and Secondary schools throughout Queensland.

In recent years she visited Malacca, Mersing and Singapore seeking an understanding of her father’s personality and explored family history with trips to Ireland, England and Switzerland. After the death of both parents, Barbara developed an interest in their lives and being a romantic elaborated on what she knew of their world.