Louise Wilson  Louise Wilson, an Australian author, has 'evolved' through life experience and inclination into her current role as a researcher and writer of historical biographies and family histories. Her books feature careful research, lots of thinking and a focus on telling an interesting story. Writing always attracted her. During her career with senior roles in the finance sector, working under the name Louise Jackson, she was the author of several textbook chapters on international finance, and wrote occasional articles and book reviews for Current Affairs Bulletin, Business Review Weekly, and Overseas Trading. For many years she maintained a side interest, mostly voluntary, in community education. For example, she was once a high school mathematics teacher at South Dubbo and Barrenjoey High Schools; as a volunteer she helped to establish the Cameragal Montessori School at North Sydney and ran the Scecgs Redlands Adult Education Centre at Cremorne; she was a long term volunteer with the Australian Institute of Export and then Executive Director of the College of International Business in Melbourne. This community education focus resulted in several publications, including a story on Ockham's Razor (ABC) in 1991 and the book 'Brainboxes' in 1994. The latter book also reflects her abiding interest in understanding people - she is a qualified administrator of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. History is in her genes. Her great grandfather James Dennis won the Frazer Scholarship in History at Sydney University in 1895. She herself never thought of following in his footsteps. Despite achieving First Class Honours in Modern History in the NSW Leaving Certificate, she thought she had too bad a memory to become a historian. Preferring to puzzle things out, she studied economics, statistics and mathematics at the University of Sydney. She commenced full-time family history research in mid 1999, by accident, something which astonishes her family, as she appeared to have no interest in the family 'stories'. She was, but the jumble of identities, times and places confused her. Some serious detective work seemed long overdue, a task irresistibly attractive to her. Now she is a member of the Australian Society of Authors, First Fleet Fellowship Vic Inc, The Genealogical Society of Victoria, Inc, the Cornish Association of Victoria, Inc and the Huguenot Society of Australia, Inc. She has produced and published four family histories since November 2007. A number of others are in the pipeline. The skills she gained as a non-fiction writer explaining complicated international finance topics to the general reader have been brought to the task of family history writing. She hopes her books make for easy and interesting reading. They reflect her continuing interest in various aspects of community education. Perhaps Louise could be described as a workaholic. But there has been time to 'get a life' as well. She grew up in the Warringah Shire of Sydney; she has lived in the country town of Dubbo, NSW and on a farm at Yea, VIC; she lived in Papua New Guinea for five years; she has lived in London on and off since 1971; in Melbourne since 1987, and now frequently visits Hong Kong. When Louise Wilson first married at the age of twenty, she expected to have one husband and three children. Instead it turned out to be the other way around. Her daughter has two sets of twins born fourteen months apart, a fraternal boy and girl aged four and identical boys aged three, so life has been busy and fascinating. Louise Wilson is currently working on a biography of the botanical artist Margaret Flockton. |
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