About Me

My name is Marianne Musgrove and I’ve always been a worrywart. Here’s a picture of me, aged four, worrying about something.



This should come as no surprise to anyone because all writers are supposed to have suffered in childhood.

Examples of my suffering

1. See the beautiful, artistic hat I’m wearing in this photo? When I was in kindergarten, I was falsely accused of getting a grown-up to make this hat for me, then passing it off as my own work. For the record, that hat was entirely my own design and construction.
   
   
   
   
2. I was made to wear clothes like this.
   
   
   
   
3. I was subjected to home haircuts.
   
   
   
   Actually, this is my sister, not me, but you can see what we were up against.
   
   
4. When I tried out for my dance school’s “Underwater Ballet”, I was cast, not as a mermaid or a sea nymph or something cool like that. No, I was cast as a piece of seaweed. That’s me in the back row, third from the right.
   
   
   

Where I grew up

I live in South Australia these days, but I was born in Sydney to an Australian mother and Dutch father. I grew up in outer-suburbia with my younger sister and my imaginary friend, Horsam. You can see Horsam and me in all of the above photos (Horsam’s the invisible one).

Sunny moments in my childhood

Fortunately, my life was not all torturous suffering. For example, I liked to take comfort in my routines, always wearing my hair in bunches, eating Vegemite sandwiches and wearing long socks. I did this every day for many years.


          Me, age eight, in my ever-present pigtails.

When I turned eleven, I decided it was time for a change. I spent the next six years wearing my hair in a pony tail, eating peanut butter sandwiches and wearing short socks.


          Me in my ever-present pony tail (yes, those are my real teeth).

I’ve always liked writing stories. Here is a certificate I was presented for my story-writing abilities.

My sister, our neighbours and our cousins liked to make up plays and musicals and perform them for the neighbourhood. This often involved elaborate costumes. Here are my sister and me dressed as cherry nose cicadas.

We had a lot of fun back then.

After school

When I got older, I went to university where I got a Bachelor of Arts (Jurisprudence) from the University of Adelaide. There, I studied English (which I loved) and law (which I loathed). I also have a Bachelor of Social Work from Flinders University.
Over the years, I've worked in various jobs, including tomato picker, social worker and museum guide for kids.

Random facts about me

• I can play piano, piano accordion, flute, tenor saxophone and recorder - all badly.
• As a child, I had many collections, just like Juliet in The Worry Tree. I had a bucket full of dried cicada shells I'd plucked off the liquid amber tree in our backyard. I used to wear them as brooches. I also had a matchbox full of my baby teeth, and a notebook filled with the number plates of anyone who'd parked in our street.
• I always wanted to own a Venus fly trap.
• I wasn't very good at reading as a child. Then, in Year Three, my family went overseas for three months and I had nothing to do. I ended up reading all the library books Mum had brought from home and finally got the hang of reading.