About

Calico Bag Books

Remembering how children used to take library bags to school so they could bring home books to read, inspired the author to have the business name Calico Bag Books first registered in 2020.

The Author

Jane Morrison was born in Sydney, Australia in 1944. Her father, a former World War II veteran and Commonwealth public servant, moved the family to Canberra, Australia’s capital, in 1951 so he could take up a position with the Federal Treasury. Canberra was a very different place back then. There were no lakes. Commonwealth Bridge was a timber structure that joined north and south Canberra, a small country town with a population of 22,000. By mid- 2022 the national capital had a population of 467,000.

Jane and her siblings attended local public schools in the 1950s and 1960s. She became a Commonwealth public servant herself in 1963, working in many different portfolios such as Foreign Affairs, Aboriginal Affairs, Trade, Veterans’ Affairs, Environment and Heritage, Taxation, and Agriculture until her “retirement” in 2004.

Jane holds bachelor’s qualifications from Australia in subjects such as Aboriginal Studies and Sociology. She also has Australian graduate diplomas in Teaching English as a Second Language and Communications, and a Masters’ degree in Environmental Law for non-lawyers. For seven years in the 1970s/80s she, her husband and family lived in the United States where Jane studied for graduate degrees in Educational Policy and Journalism. She also holds a Certificate in Genealogical Research from the Society of Australian Genealogists, Sydney.

Proud to be Irish, published under the Calico Bag Books banner, is Jane’s first book, although she worked on many publications during her career as a public affairs/communications officer/editor in the Australian Public Service.

Acknowledgment of Country

Calico Bag Books acknowledges that the sovereignty of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Australia’s First Nations, has never been ceded.

We pay our respects to the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, sea, culture, and community.

We also pay our respects to the Traditional Custodians of Country on which Calico Bag Books conducts its business, and to Elders past, present, and emerging.