Jane developed a love of old buildings and the past growing up in a landscape of old country homesteads and Horbury Hunt woolsheds and churches near a country town whose glory days were ‘history’. This evolved into a lifelong fascination with the connections between people and places, and a desire to burrow into archives and libraries to piece together the stories of our past. Degrees in social history and work on a diverse range of properties, collections and exhibitions, including the first Government House display at the Museum of Sydney, only strengthened her passion for helping people to understand and appreciate our sometimes grimy, often quirky and always illuminating ongoing history.