Meet Dr Shelley O'Reilly

How it all began ...

I was an imaginative, dreamy kid growing up in country towns in the 1970s and 1980s, but perhaps the writerly instinct showed up most in more covert ways than just storytelling.

You see, I was too shy to really talk much to grown-ups, but I insisted on twirling around in front of the television (it would have been black and white then) in front of them while they were trying to watch it and (probably) drink beer.

At school, my teachers would always ask me to read out my stories and I would obey in much the same way I perform now - kind of awkward and halting, yet weirdly impassioned at times.

When I was nine, I received a manual typewriter for Christmas. Although I always kept diaries and autograph books (anyone remember them?) and journals, the typewriter, bless its metal heart, was the real game changer.

Beyond the page

Outside of my writing, I find joy in many things. I am a lover of literature, of course, and the art of writing itself. My home is filled with the gentle purring of cats, the clucking of hens, the calm of fish, and the industrious hum of bees.  It is also filled with the screeching of cats pulling fur off each other and the squealing of hens demanding more treats.

I am also not averse to watching reels and True Crime documentaries until my eyes and brain fall out.

I adore flowers and gardens and growing things and am ecstatic to have a proper sturdy green house at last full of seedlings and cuttings.

When I see little birds I am sometimes dumbstruck with the wonder of them and think I may have glimpsed a wing of the numinous. I also have a deep appreciation for old historic houses like Patterdale and Clarendon and all the gorgeous sandstone mansions that dot Tasmania though they are the legacy of a colonialism that come at huge cost.

Tasmania: my muse

I lived "overseas" on the "mainland" for nineteen years. I liked living in Melbourne and bought my first house there - in Glenroy, and bloody hell I have stories about that experience!

But eventually I started to pine for the heart-shaped island of home so furiously that it was almost making me ill. I missed my family, the mountain and the water. I was landlocked for far too long. I have never regretted coming home. This place is inscribed on me.

I am an islander and love islands: Tasmania, Bruny, Maria, Norfolk, King, and Flinders, as well as Skye. A fan of Anne Cleeves (it was a thrill to meet her in Geeveston of all places a few years ago), I would love to visit Shetland.

I feel this place in my bones.

Shelley O'Reilly, "The Shack"