I was born on September 6, 1981, in (of all places) Tulsa, Oklahoma. My parents were attending a conference four weeks before my due date when I made an early appearance, many miles from their home in Memphis, Tennessee.

As far as I can tell, only two significant things have resulted from this impulse to be born in Oklahoma. 1. People often burst into song when I answer their question of “Where are you from originally?” (24 Hours from Tulsa or Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!) and 2. my first air-flight was at the age of one day and a half.

Before I was 2 my parents immigrated to Australia. First, we lived in a quiet, leafy suburb of Melbourne, then on a dusty sheep station in New South Wales (not far from the famous “Dish”), then in Queensland, with a pristine white beach for a backyard. Finally, my parents bought a crazy, dilapidated old stage coach inn in the middle of Tasmania, built in 1825 and loaded with character. (The oldest building in Australia dates from the 1790s, so we are talking about a piece of early Colonial history.)

Since then, Tasmania has been my home. My life has been full of travel (childhood visits to American relatives, and, more recently, work trips in Europe and the US), so Tasmania has become for me a place of security and tranquillity, where the land feels kind.

As for my nationality, I sometimes feel like an adopted child. In this analogy, America is my biological mother and Australia is the family that raised me. This is perhaps the clearest explanation I can give of my love, gratitude and connectedness to both countries.

Childhood was a time of learning and imagination, adventure and security for me. My parents’ decision to locate my education in our home was an excellent choice, providing me with both “roots and wings”. I learned that my worth was not defined by the opinions of others or my own achievements, but by the fact that I was made by God, and from my earliest memory I was encouraged to develop a vital relationship with my Maker.

People sometimes ask for my testimony. I cannot remember a time when Jesus was not there. My journey as a Christian has therefore been one of growing closer to God in Christ Jesus, of being challenged to forsake anything that sets itself up as a barrier between us, of sometimes succeeding, but often failing, and finding at last that He meets us in our brokenness and failure – He, the Shepherd who goes out into the storm to find us.

I began studying the harp at age 7 and began to take it seriously as a vocation when I was 14, following a strong conviction that God was leading me in that direction. By 17, I was performing on a semi-professional basis and the following year I gained my first harp student. In 2002 I recorded my first album, in 2003 I had my first performance in Europe and started the Harp Society of Tasmania and in 2004 I began composing original music.

In 2005, I was on my way to play my first concerto with an orchestra in Tennessee, when my mother and I dropped by a household in Camarillo, CA, for dinner. My father had met Ted Baehr at a conference in 2002 and there was a standing invitation for our families to make contact, should we ever find ourselves at a loose end in LA.

As I met the Baehr family, I was feeling uncharacteristically jet-lagged and for once my very buoyant social confidence had deserted me. Then Ted’s eldest son walked into the room and I felt quite suddenly and naturally that everything was right again, and that I was in the presence of one of the most interesting people I had ever met (a conviction I still hold).

We had a good conversation (a conversation with someone who reads Chesterton is bound to be a good one) and Peirce offered to drive my mother and I around the area the following day before our flight left. The drive was lovely and interesting and it opened my eyes to the beauty of California. Peirce also lent me a book, one of the oddest novels I have ever read, by Charles Williams. I remember that as I read the book I felt happy that he had respected my intelligence and discernment enough to lend me something so thought-provokingly bizarre!

Later in 2005, I undertook my first European tour and recorded a highly personal album with many original songs and harp solos. I always enjoy the fact that I began to write love songs a few months after meeting Peirce. One of these is on the opening page of this website.

An intermittent correspondence with Peirce continued, mostly relating to books and big concepts – nothing very personal. This changed when my mother and I decided to set ourselves the enormous and ludicrous challenge of hiking the Overland Track, a wilderness walk through the uninhabited highlands of Tasmania, and took it into our heads to invite various interesting people from all over the world. Peirce, of course, was at the top of the list.

I could risk a cliché and say the rest is history. Better: the rest is His story to write, as it is our story to live.