TVT Channel 6 - Logie-award winning children’s programme ‘It’s Just For Us’ with Lindsay Edwards - circa 1968.

Here I am being interviewed by compere Gordon Boyd - just before my first national television performance in Holden Showcase at GTV 9.

When I was 16, I dared to audition for a TV talent quest. I didn’t tell anyone. I was still at school. Try again next year, I was told, but wasn’t too disappointed because TVT6 in Hobart offered me the role of hostess and vocalist on their Logie award-winning children’s programme, It’s Just For Us, alongside Kommotion star, Lindsay Edwards. We got on like a house on fire and had a blast of a time

At the Easter Show, Lindsay and I performed live at Australia’s first colour television demonstration, singing Peter Richman’s song ‘This is Colour Television’. Amazingly, people queued up to see us. I looked like a test pattern here with (back row) Lindsay Edwards, John Crook, Caroline Schmit, Harry Ward, Graeme Smith, Koko the Clown (Rex Hallam); (front) James Montgomery, me, Peter Sharpe..

Years later, at TVT6’s 50th anniversary event in Hobart, Lindsay Edwards and I sang the Colour Television song again (with Judy Lynn (left) and James Montgomery (right). It was fantastic!

I turned 17 and auditioned again - for Holden Showcase, which was shot at GTV9 in Melbourne. I was lucky. It was the beginning of my 16 year singing career. Compere Gordon Boyd dubbed me ‘The Pride of Tasmania’. The media had fun with that.. For my first national TV appearance, playing my Maton guitar and singing with Hector Crawford’s orchestra, I sang Verdelle Smith’s ‘Tar and Cement’. I wasn’t much of a dressmaker, but I made my yellow gown trimmed with yellow daisies.