When I was a kid, growing up on the North Shore of Sydney, I was animal mad. We lived in a big old house that was full of books and full of pets. We were so lucky because my dad was a vet. For a few years we actually lived at the back of our vet hospital. So, of course, we had lots of amazing animals. We always had about four dogs and four cats. We had goldfish, bunnies, budgies, mice and all the animals that kids normally have as pets.

However, we also had lots of really unusual creatures. For example, on our kitchen table, we had a round fishbowl, with little baby turtles swimming around it. My dad had an enormous carpet python called Oscar, who my mum sometimes used to wear around her neck like a slithering scarf. When he was at university, my dad kept Oscar in a glass tank in his bedroom. The only problem was that Oscar was a clever escape artist. One day Dad woke up to the sound of screaming. He looked over to find that the glass snake tank was empty. Oscar had escaped again. So, of course, Dad followed the sound of the screaming. He ran down the corridor and burst into the next-door bedroom to find his friend in bed, shrieking loudly with a giant python curled up on his tummy. Dad thought Oscar just wanted a cuddle, but it must have been terrifying!

My dad used to work on lots of farms, and he’d often bring home orphan animals for us to look after, when their mothers had died. I had a cuddly lamb called Geranium, who I used to feed milk from a bottle. We had yellow ducklings and three piglets and lots of noisy, young calves who roamed around our back garden.

I raised pet possums and injured birds. We even had a baby wallaby called Christabel who lived in a sack on the back of our kitchen door and hopped all around our back garden. She was adorable!

As you can imagine, our animals were always up to some kind of mischief. For example, I had a little white Welsh mountain pony, called Rosie, who used to love breaking into the kitchen looking for snacks. One day I came into the kitchen to find the back door wide open and Rosie inside our kitchen. The pony was pushing an empty saucepan around the floor. The saucepan had been licked clean but half an hour before, Mum had cooked our dinner – a big pot of potato-and-leek soup. Rosie had scoffed the lot! Mum was very cross about that one.

Another time, one of our cats, Pickles, went missing. I searched everywhere for that cat. I finally found her inside the washing machine where she’d had a litter of six tiny damp kittens on a nest of dirty clothes. We might have accidentally washed her, which would have been a disaster.

It was hard work looking after all those pets. At feeding time, we had the pony eating the dog food, the dogs would eat the cat food, the wallaby would eat the horse’s hay – and they all made lots of mess to clean up. But it was never boring.

So you can see I had the best childhood in the world. I am still animal mad, which is why I always have lots of animal characters in my books. I don’t have as many pets now as I did as a child, although my own three kids are always asking for more. We have a Rhodesian ridgeback lion-hunting dog called Rosie, who loves to sleep at my feet while I write. I love riding my horse, called Nutmeg, up at my brother’s farm in Sugarloaf Valley. Many wild birds and animals visit our garden.

And to follow a family tradition, we have a pet Stimson python called Sammy, who lives in a glass tank on our kitchen bench. Sammy, just like Oscar before him, is also a clever escape artist! So life in my house is never dull!