Jill McDougall
As a child
Angry magpies. That’s what I most remember most from childhood. I grew up on a farm near Dalby in Queensland and so did stacks of magpies. They dive-bombed my school hat when I passed their special tree. One day I had a brain wave. I drew fierce glaring eyes on top of my hat and before you could say, mad pies (not that you’d ever want to) … no more dive-bombing. Apart from crazy birds, I loved the long walk to the bus stop and back. I used to make up stories and tell them out loud to the cows. My favourite was about a rich girl called Miranda who lived in a house that looked like Sleeping Beauty’s palace. She had a swimming pool on her roof and flew to school in her private jet.
As an adult
I had loads of jobs after I left school. Biscuit sorter, a deck hand, bus driver … you name it, I did it. Finally I settled on teaching and worked all over Australia in primary and secondary schools. My students were always acting up (in a good way). I wrote plays and poems for them to perform and eventually a batch of my poems about life in the outback appeared in a book called Anna the Goanna.
I now write full-time from my cottage by the sea in Adelaide, South Australia. The best thing about being a writer? You can go to work in your slippers!
As an artist
125! That’s how many children’s books I’ve written. Most are for use in schools and they cover a range of topics from life in Mexico to breeding worms to purple aliens. People ask me: Where do you get your ideas? I tell them that ideas are all around but you have to notice them. Some ideas come along by accident like the time an escaped criminal was on the news. His name was Dave Granger but I heard it as Grave Danger. Immediately, I made Grave Danger into an evil character in a story.
Things you didn't know about Jill McDougall
- I have a pet spider named Ruth.
- I’m into extreme sports such as extreme ice-cream eating and extreme snoring.
- I wrote my first poem, ‘Mouse Mouse in the Hose’, when I was six. (It was meant to be ‘Mouse, Mouse in the House’ but I wasn’t a very good speller.)
- I won the award for Best Book by Jill McDougall three years in a row.
- As a child, my favourite book was about a flying rabbit called Pookie.
- Last year, I grew 127 red onions in my veggie garden.
- My three favourite colours? Sky blue, quiet-sea blue and secret-lake blue.
- My best score in Scrabble was 869 points. The person I was playing against went to sleep so I had all the goes.
- I’ve never met anyone famous but when I was little, the Queen waved at me. (Or at least the person next to me.)
- My favourite word is confuddled. That’s how I feel when I have to write ten things about myself.