About The Australian Author

Judith Leoni, nee Luscombe, was born in 1938 in Bunbury and lived her childhood years in the small town of Wagin, in the Great Southern Region of Western Australia. She was educated at St Joseph’s Convent in Wagin and at St Gertrude’s College in New Norcia before training as a nurse at Princess Margaret Hospital for Children in Perth, and completing midwifery training at St Anne’s Maternity Hospital, now known as Mercy Hospital, Mount Lawley.

During her nursing career, Judith worked at hospitals in Lake Grace and Kununoppin in WA, and in Sydney and Melbourne. She was a Charge Sister at PMH for a number of years, and in the late 1960s ran the maternity section at Busselton Hospital. In 1968-70 she worked as a Sister at Exmouth Hospital and met her husband, Len Leoni, a US Navy fleet sailor, who was completing part of his compulsory military service at the United States Navy Communications Base at Exmouth.

They married in 1969 in Perth, and during the 42 years of their marriage have lived in a number of American cities, from Los Angeles to Anchorage in Alaska, and in other countries, including Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu.

Jude and Len, who have two daughters, returned to live in Australia in 1985 and now live on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. Her previous book, My Mother and Myself, memoirs of her childhood years in rural WA in the 1940s, was released in 2009.