Author Profile

Dell Brand grew up in Sydney, attending North Sydney Girls High School and Sydney University. She taught in state high schools during her working life, teaching Physical and Health Education. She has been recognised with the Minister’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Outstanding Achievement in Education Award from the Australian College of Education.

She has always had a keen interest in children with challenging behaviours, and worked for a number of years with a wilderness-enhanced program aimed at turning around young people’s lives. This formed the basis of her PhD. As a teacher in this program she was able to involve herself in many of her recreational passions including abseiling, rock-climbing, wilderness trekking, canyoning and canoeing.  In recent years she has developed a particular interest in family history and history in general.

Dell is also a part-time journalist and has been published by a number of editors in Australia and abroad.  She contributes regularly to four Australian magazines and frequently to newspapers. She uses her own travel experiences to write first-hand about places she has seen and people she has met. Some of these places have found their way into this book.

Dell loves the outdoors, especially the wilderness. In her younger years she was a keen swimmer and an A grade squash player. She now enjoys all outdoor pursuits and tries to play golf regularly.  She is married with two grown-up children and lives on the south coast of New South Wales.

This is her first children’s book.