Kerry and I were always destined to meet… many incidences happened in the years leading up to the actual meeting day. Our sons were in the same grade at school. We hung out in history groups. We love Queenslanders. We live in Paddington. Kerry came to one of my workshops. I attended one of her conferences. Kerry designed flyers for one of my Under the Lino talks. I went to Kerry’s house and walked through it with my children one Paddington Halloween.

But it was a simple question on a social media post that drove us together in the end. Kerry asked the Paddington community whether there was a local history group. I answered her, saying, ‘No, but there should be. Would you like to start one together?’ The rest, as they say, is history!

Kerry and I started Paddington Then & Now, an online history project, curating stories and photographs from locals about the area. There are over 2000 members, who regularly contribute to social media pages, we interview community elders about their lives here, we scan photographs of old times and take corresponding pictures of current times.

It became a full-time job running this amazing project, and we started getting known in the local suburbs as those two history girls.