Ann left a nursing career to marry a farmer and spent many years with her growing family on the tablelands of northeastern Victoria at Strathbogie. A desire to learn the art of pottery led her through a three-year degree course in ceramics at Bendigo College of Advanced Education and to setting up a pottery on the farm at Strathbogie. Responding to a joint love of flying, she and her husband bought a Musketeer and learnt to fly.
After leaving life on the farm Ann took up writing, studying short story writing and writing research at Berwick TAFE followed by a two-year course in novel writing at Berwick and Frankston TAFE.