Catherine Jinks was born in Brisbane, Australia in 1963. She grew up in Papua New Guinea and later studied medieval history at the University of Sydney. After working for several years in a bank, she married Peter Dockrill, a Canadian journalist, and lived for a short time in Nova Scotia, Canada. She is now a full-time writer, residing in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales with Peter and their daughter Hannah. Catherine is a four-time winner of the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year award, and has also won a Victorian Premier’s Literature Award, the Adelaide Festival Award for Literature, the Ena Noel Award for Children’s Literature and an Aurealis Award for Science Fiction. In 2001 she was presented with a Centenary Medal for her contribution to Australian Children’s Literature.
Andrew grew up in the Victorian country town of Bairnsdale, in a Cape Cod house that his father built. From the dormer windows in his bedroom he could see over the paddocks and lakes on one side and the town on the other. When Andrew was a child he liked drawing. Andrew trained as a painter and teacher and would not have started illustrating picture books if he hadn’t married a kindergarten teacher.
