From stories in OUTBACK magazine to championing Australia's forgotten nurses of the Vietnam War: writer and former nurse Annabelle Brayley

Can you expand on that for me?

Absolutely, and I've, I've made no secret of this over the years.

So I have said I never, never planned to be a writer, never meant to be a writer.

That's actually not entirely correct.

I mean, I think we're all storytellers on some level, and I think I, I've always been a writer.

I've always been a writer.

I used to write long letters at school, et cetera.

I think the thing I never planned for, because I never imagined it happening, was actually being published as a writer.

And so it's, it's one of those, you know, pie-in-the-sky kinda dreams like winning lotto, you know? W- you know, someone's...

Especially living where I lived.

But we sold out in 2001 and moved up to the Morven community.

Uh, we didn't ever plan to stay here, but it's such a great community, we did.

And I'd been working in a remote healthcare service and decided that I needed to get out of it because I was driving, you know, just doing a lot of driving, and I fell asleep one day and thought, "That's it." So in my wisdom, I decided to buy the Morven News Agency.

S- I'd already been reading Outback long, long since, but buying the news agency actually gave me an insight into the magazine industry from a completely different perspective.

I had no idea, you know, how it...

I mean, I still don't really understand it, but I, I didn't even think about it before that.

So here was Outback sitting on my shop, or about to be in my shop.

I hadn't quite taken over.

Again, sliding door thing.

The Victoria Downs Merino Stud were celebrating their centenary in April 2006, and I had just signed the contract to buy the newsagent.

And I wrote to the...

And I think Paul Myers was the editor-in-chief then.

Anyway, I wrote to the editor-in-chief of Outback and said, "Are you sending somebody up here to write, you know, about the Victoria Downs centenary? 'Cause it's obviously very important." So long story short, I think I've, I've, I tell...

This is the way I tell the story.

I'm not sure, you know, exactly, 'cause it's 20 years ago, but I believe that I, he wrote to me and said, "Can you write?" And I wrote back, this is the short version of the email, and said, "No." Or, "Well, actually, yes, but I've never been published."And I had written some book reviews for Pedals Magazine over the years.