It was shortly after a six month stint working as Martin Sharp’s studio assistant during Martin’s preparations for his first solo exhibition that I developed an interest in photography. It was 1965.

So when Sharp left for the UK I formed my own photographic studio, working in advertising, fashion and theatre.

When Sharp then returned to Australia in 1969 he invited me to join him and a group of other artists in ‘The Yellow House,’ an artist’s co-op in the old Clune Galleries in Victoria Road, Potts Point, Sydney.

I stare at my boyfriend, Ian, in a stoned haze across the small table in our Kings Cross flat. Wow, that pot we just smoked is some powerful shit! I vaguely remember it being mentioned that it had been soaked in DMT, a very toxic and dangerous chemical. The room faded in and out and I felt very strongly disembodied. The only thing to do would be to lie down and pray that it too shall pass eventually.

What is a great love story in one place can be statutory rape in another. So I find it harder to tell the story of the start of our forty-year love affair when we’re in the United States. But, I will tell it here.

At the grand old age of thirty-three I had broken free of the public service and become the 1970’s hippy I’d wished to be. Divorced with three children and experienced in life, or so I supposed, I worked in Sydney as a Manufacturing Jeweler and as a part-time counselor at the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross.