Christine Leonard

Christine Leonard

Christine Leonard has lived much of her life on islands. She was born in Papua New Guinea and grew up in Bougainville, and went on to spend many years working in remote communities in the Asia Pacific Region through international aid projects. With her husband Chris, she first came to Coochiemudlo Island to visit ex-PNG friend Keith Stebbins. The Leonards immediately fell in love with the place, bought their Coochie house in 2010, and moved to the island permanently in 2014.

After retiring from her Asia Pacific work in 2017, Christine spent several years volunteering with island-based community groups including the Coochiemudlo Island Heritage Society. It was just a matter of time before she reconnected with her lifelong interest in social history and writing.

Christine is a regular blogger with the Genealogy Society of Queensland (GSQ) and other family history sites. She has also written about one of her female ancestors who arrived in Australia as a convict; this work will feature in a chapter of a forthcoming book to be published, in Tasmania, by Convict Women’s Press Inc.

Her first serious writing project was a book about the Wall family, featuring William Wall who was transported to Van Diemen’s Land in 1835. The Wall Family weaving the threads of memories is in its second print run, with the E-book available through Kobo and Leonard Stories.

Another project involved the editing and publishing a memoir written by the late Fr Franz Miltrup sm, a priest who spent 50 years in Bougainville, from 1938. Fr Miltrup died in 1996. His memoir was written in Tok Pisin, an English-based creole used as a commercial and administrative language in Papua New Guinea. Christine helped translate the manuscript into English after which she edited and published it, titled When the Garamuts Beat—A Memoir Of Fifty Years In Bougainville. This book is available through Leonard Stories. A second edition will be available soon.

In between writing short stories, blogs and editing a quarterly journal for the PNG Association of Australia, Christine is working on a biography about a well-known Coochie identity.

‘Writing takes up a lot of time and sadly, I’ve had to take a step back from a few things for a while—like playing golf!’, says Christine.

Read more about Christine and her publications on her website, Leonard Stories.