Best-selling author Liz Harfull is passionate about telling the stories and unearthing the histories of the extraordinary everyday people who make up our communities, especially in rural and regional Australia. Liz grew up on a dairy farm near Mount Gambier, and has been earning a living writing in one form or another since she was a teenager. She was inspired down this path by Robe author and historian Kathleen Bermingham, who mentored her as a child. Liz has written 10 books, including three about Robe and several national bestsellers capturing the stories of women farmers and country show cooking traditions. Today Liz lives in the Adelaide Hills, occasionally finding time to bake scones and make jam while juggling a busy writing career and volunteer work as a community historian.

TOPIC: The untold stories of Robe’s pioneering women

Within days of the first allotments of land being sold in 1846, government officials landed on the shores of Guichen Bay to establish one of the most isolated outposts in the British Empire. If you relied on official records and newspaper accounts, you would assume the contingent was made up entirely of men, but among the adventurous spirits who set up camp in the sand dunes was Charlotte Butler and her four children. Drawing on Charlotte’s private journal, author Liz Harfull will reveal a woman’s rare perspective of the earliest days of European settlement in the South East, and the mostly forgotten stories of some other pioneering women who followed in her footsteps.