The Official Bio

The smorgasbord of life called Jane St Catherine from a secure suburban existence. Leaving her husband and an office job, she set off on an old 250cc trail bike to ride around the world. With determination, persistence and courage she has overcome many challenges. University educated and continually learning from diverse experiences, Jane has worked in Parliament House and on prawn trawlers, driven 400 ton mining trucks and taught children on outback Australian cattle stations. She has attended many personal development courses and read hundreds of books in a continual effort to better understand herself and others.

The More Personal Version

I grew up in the Snowy Mountains region of Australia with an intense longing to travel – indefinitely. Dad was (and still is, at 80), a light aircraft pilot and gliding instructor and I grew to love flying, including loops, at an early age. We camped a lot – either in a family-sized tent or under the wing of a plane or under the stars, in some remote locations where my brother and I made our own 1960’s style fun and Dad gave us moonlight history talks about the early pioneers and explorers.

My first overseas trip was to Malaysia with Malaysian and Icelandic girlfriends in the late 1970’s and we stayed with various Malaysian families during several weeks. I wanted to extend the adventure as long as possible, so when my friends flew back home after our university break, I deferred my studies and caught a freighter from Singapore to Perth. Then I caught the train home across the Nullabor from Perth to Canberra and started saving for my next adventure.

I got married in my early twenties and was a public servant and good suburban wife, sewing and knitting all my own clothes, growing all our own fruit and vegetables and riding my bicycle everywhere like a crazy fitness maniac. I’d always had an intense longing to ride a bicycle around the world and eventually, 11 years later, after 12 months off work with chronic fatigue, I decided it was time to escape my suburban ‘prison’ and stretch my broken butterfly wings. I set off on an old motorcycle to ride around the world indefinitely. I wrote about that decision in

It’s a long story and it’s been an up-and-down roller-coaster life. That bike ride turned into a long-term Australian adventurous life, rather than a round-the-world journey.

Along the way I’ve worked in a pub and roadhouse in Cape York, been a governess in outback Queensland, worked and lived at sea on a prawn trawler, been a boarding house mistress in a Melbourne Grammar School, driven 400 ton dump trucks in mines and had many other unusual and interesting jobs. In between all of those long hours at the mine, I renovated and subdivided a couple of properties by myself and at one stage I bought into an investment property with some other people, nearly lost everything and virtually ended up living on the street. I wrote about that in my chapter of  “Pebbles in the Pond – Transforming the World One Person at a Time”, (with 40+ other transformational authors from around the world).

I’m now based back in the mountains, close to where I grew up. I want to share with you some of the amazing experiences I’ve had so far in this lifetime and I want to encourage, support and inspire you to follow your heart and to experience the best of what travelling can do for us and who travelling can inspire us to become. In addition to that, I’m aiming to create a ‘laptop lifestyle’ by becoming a travel blogger and I’d love to take you along on the journey as I learn how to create that exciting reality.

I’d really love you to share your travel experiences and dreams here too. I’m particularly interested in the life-transforming journeys – the sort where you decide to change your life or someone else’s as a result of travel. I’ve started interviewing women travellers to inspire and inform you. I will be researching some fabulous trips, destinations, festivals, gear and anything else I think will interest you.

And most of all, I want to know what you’d like me to provide so that I can help you to be truly passionate about journeying to the best possible you. Let’s journey to the joy of our passionate, authentic selves.