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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my children, Bindi and Robert, for patiently supporting me while I spent many evenings and weekends writing this book (or as Robert used to say, “Mum is doing her schoolwork.”).
Thanks also to those who helped entertain, feed, bathe, and wrangle my kids while I wrote (it does take a village!): Barry and Shelley Lyon, Emma Schell, Jeanette Covacevich, John and Bonnie Marineau, Brian and Sherri Marineau, April Harvie, Brian and Kate Coulter, Thelma Engle.
A special thank-you to my dear friend John Edward. If it wasn’t for you, this book would never have been written.
Thanks to my precious friends and family, who were my sounding boards: Wes Mannion, Frank and Joy Muscillo, John Stainton, Judi Bailey, Craig Franklin, Bob Irwin.
A huge thank-you to Kate Schell, who helped me assemble my first draft--there were 250,000 words of stories that made us laugh and cry. You took the journey with me.
I would also like to thank Gil Reavill, for taking nine hundred pages and helping me choose which stories to keep for the final draft. Natasha Stoynoff, you were ready to help as a collaborator. I hope we actually get to work together one day.And to Ursula Cary, thank you for flying all the way to Australia to help me catch crocs for research and make those final edits.
I’d like to extend a big thank-you to all the interesting people who helped to shape our lives and are included in the pages of this book.
And finally, a huge thank-you to my husband, Steve. You are now the angel leaning over my shoulder, whispering in my ear that I can do anything--you always believed in me.
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