Tanya Heaslip is a local Australian author from outback Central Australia who has spent much of her life traversing the ‘road less travelled’.
Having grown up on an isolated cattle station north of Alice Springs in the 1960s and 70s, she was schooled via Correspondence School and two-way radio through School of the Air. Her childhood stories are captured in her book ‘An Alice Girl.’
Her memoir ‘Alice to Prague’ offers an honest, often funny, and bittersweet account of love, loss, and belonging. The book vividly captures the magic of Prague, its cultural heritage, and the profound impact it had on Tanya’s life.
Tanya beautifully captures her personal odyssey from the red, raw outback to the enchanting city of Prague. Her childhood dreams of Europe, nurtured by the crackly static of a two-way radio and the pages of history books, finally came to life as she embarked on her solo adventure to Europe in 1989. The memoir vividly portrays her experiences, from the initial struggles to reconnect with her childhood dreams to the profound impact of witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall. This historic event reignited her sense of wonder and curiosity, propelling her to return to Europe and eventually find herself in the fairytale city of Prague in 1994.
Tanya recently returned to Prague in 2023, nearly 30 years after her first visit, providing her with a unique opportunity to witness the city's evolution while reconnecting with old friends and rediscovering the enduring beauty of Prague.
Here is an except from an exclusive piece that Tanya wrote for Red Kangaroo Books about ‘Alice to Prague’.
“But a week before I was due to return to Australia, a miracle occurred. The Berlin Wall fell. Decades of Cold War oppression collapsed under the people’s cry for human rights and political freedom. Nobody ever thought such a thing would be possible. Yet people power ultimately defied despots and evil. It was incredible to believe that I was there, in Berlin – the epicentre of so much pain and suffering for so many decades – under a leaden sky, boots in the icy snow, and an Eastern European guard hacking off a piece of Wall for me. My worlds collided. Clutching that piece of Wall firmly in hand, I returned home, determined to find a way to return.
I wanted to see what was over the other side of that Wall!”
Read the full piece here.
Read more about author, Tanya Heaslip.
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