Bed Tails

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.

Mitch Vane is a RMIT Graphic Arts graduate and has been working as a freelance illustrator for fifteen years – five of them based in London. She lives in Melbourne with her partner who is a writer, and two children. Mitch’s work touches all areas of visual communication; cartoons for magazines, book covers, children’s book illustrations, work for promotions and packaging in advertising, editorial illustrations and posters. Her cartoons appear regularly in the Age. She also illustrated two Aussie Nibbles by Ursula Dubosarsky, The Two Gorillas and Fairy Bread.